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THE 



Hem of His Garment. 



SPIRITUAL LESSONS FROM THE 
LIFE OF OUR LORD. 



BY THE 

REV. FRANK SEWALL. 



if it were but the hem of His garment." — St. Mark vi. 56. 






/3X£&J* 



PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 

LONDON: 16 SOUTHAMPTON ST., COVENT GARDEN. 

1876. 



7> 









S> 






t* 



M 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 



THE PILLOW OF STONES. 

DIVINE ALLEGORIES IN THEIR SPIRITUAL MEANING. 



COPYRIGHT, 1875, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 



C j. b.lippi m f coTT & -c ot S 

V er^-^ ^r 



DEDICATION. 

TO 

MY FATHER AND MOTHER, 

With Filial Love and Devotion. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

I. — The Hem of His Garment; or, How to Begin the 

Religious Life 7 

II. — The Generation of Jesus Christ; or, God's De- 
scent to Man. A Meditation for New Year's 
Day 31 

III. — The Sword in Mary's Soul; or, The Divine Judg- 
ments in the Church . . . . .48 

IV. — The Mother of Jesus at Cana ; or, Humility and 
Obedience the Receptacles of the Lord's Re- 
generating Grace 65 

V. — Then that which is worse ; or, Spiritual Drunk- 
enness .86 

VI. — The Girded Servant; or, The Subordination of 

the Sensual 101 

VII. — The Blind restored to Sight; or, The True 

Character of Christian Evidence . . .120 

VIII. — The Return Home; or, Individual Responsibil- 
ity before God 137 

IX. — The Word of Life; or, How the Lord commu- 
nicates Spiritual Life to Man . . . .153 

(5) 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

X. — Not the Righteous, but Sinners called ; or, 
The Church not an Assembly of perfected 
Men and Women 175 

XI. — The Stranger at the Door; A Meditation for 

Christmas-Time .194 

XII. — The Unknown Hour; or, How rightly to Pre- 
pare to Die 207 



I. 

®fte Pern ni Ufa <$at mnrt ; of, front to §egin the 
lieligion^ gift. 



If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole. — St. Matt, 

ix. 21. 



THE Divine narrative from which these 
words are taken forms in itself an epitome 
of the whole gospel. It presents, in its little 
cluster of vividly-portrayed events, an allegory 
of our blessed Lord's whole life and mission in 
this world. For as our Lord, by birth, made his 
dwelling in our corrupt and sinful nature, and 
during his life was constantly administering his 
saving Word, by teaching, by example, and by 
his own spiritual combats with the inner king- 
dom of Satan ; and as He, in death, became our 
complete Redemption and Resurrection into 

(7) 



8 THE HEM OF HIS GARMENT; OR, 

everlasting life; so, here, does the narrative in 
its beginning find the Saviour sitting at meat 
in the house of publicans and sinners; thence 
He goes forth, on his saving mission, to call 
the dead to life, being summoned by a ruler of 
the synagogue, whose daughter lies even now 
dead ; and on his way, by the ministry of his 
Word, of that virtue which goeth out of Him, 
He heals a poor woman,- who, coming behind 
Him, touches the hem of his garment, believing 
that thus she shall be made whole. 

This incident is eminently illustrative of the 
saving power of the Lord as the Word, — that 
is, the Divine Truth; and it affords at the same 
time a most needful and practical example of 
that humility and faith which must go together 
in the mind of any person who will share this 
salvation. 

The woman which was diseased with an 
issue of blood twelve years, who had suffered 
many things of many physicians, and had spent 
all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but 



HOW TO BEGIN THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. g 

rather grew worse, stands, in so far, as the type 
of our corrupt and degraded humanity, of our 
spiritual uncleanness and disease, which is be- 
yond the help of mere human skill and effort ; 
but, in her saying within herself, "If I but touch 
his garment, I shall be whole," and her coming 
behind the Lord, amidst the throng that pressed 
about Him, and silently, but in faith, touching 
only the hem of his garment, she becomes 
the illustrious and ever-memorable pattern of 
true Christian humility and of saving faith. 
"Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath 
made thee whole ;" here is the whole gospel 
of salvation preached in a single sentence to 
this healed woman, the type of our redeemed 
humanity. " Daughter," — it is the Father of all 
who speaks: come dowm from heaven to save, — 
"be of good comfort," — it is the good tidings of 
salvation that He brings, — "thy faith hath made 
thee whole ;" this salvation is in such a faith as, 
overcoming all obstacles, shame, the fear of the 
multitude, the pressure of the throng, brings 

A* 



IO THE HEM OF HIS GARMENT; OR, 

the believing one to the Lord Himself, and im- 
pels him to perform in lowliness of heart the 
humblest and most external duties in the fear 
of the Lord, and in a trust in his mercy and 
saving power. But it is manifest that the prac- 
tical import of this simple and comprehensive 
lesson all turns upon the significance of that 
act of the woman's faith, by which the Saviour 
perceived that virtue had gone out of Him, and 
by which the woman was made whole of her 
disease. For no one will question but that this 
diseased woman is the representative of our 
natural and unregenerate will, and that in her 
miraculous cure is typified the regeneration of 
man through the operation of the Holy Spirit. 
But the practical and all-important part of the 
lesson here afforded is, By what means does 
the Holy Spirit thus exert or put forth in us its 
healing, saving power? what have we on our 
part to do ? how are we to do this ? and how 
will this make us whole ? 

We see at a glance that the means of this 



HOW TO BEGIN THE RELIGIOUS LITE. II 

Divine operation, of this going forth of the 
healing virtue, was the woman's deliberate, 
voluntary, humble, trustful act. The Lord did 
not come to her specially, calling her by name, 
raising her, assuring her. At most He was 
passing by where she was. He was in the 
world, He was going then on his mission of 
mercy, of giving life to the dead. The woman 
beholds Him, believes that He not only can 
save her, but will save her. She comes to 
Him ; she passes forward through the crowd ; 
she allows neither shame nor fear, nor any 
impediment, to stand in her way ; she is will- 
ing on her part to struggle hard for the attain- 
ment of her end ; but, as regards the Saviour, 
she does not importune Him with her cries, 
nor even her presence ; she will not stay his 
feet a moment ; she asks not a glance of com- 
passion from his eye, a word of comfort from 
his mouth ; she knows that He is Love itself, 
ever merciful and ever strong to save ; the 
effort is to be on her part, not on his ; she will 



12 THE HEM OF HIS GARMENT; 0R y 

not throw herself in his way, — she will not 
even utter a prayer in his outward ear ; she will 
implore Him only in the silent desire of her 
heart ; she will cry to Him in her earnest but 
unuttered faith ; she will come behind Him, 
saying to herself, " if I may but touch his 
garment, I shall be made whole." She does 
so : she touches but the hem of his robe, — 
the fringe or tassel of that garment whose 
pattern is given in the ancient Levitical law, — 
and immediately the fountain of her blood is 
dried up ; she feels in her body that her plague 
is healed. 'Tis then the Saviour turns and 
looks upon her that has done this thing ; 'tis 
then she falls trembling before Him, and in 
heartfelt acknowledgment of his mercy tells 
Him all the truth. And now she hears from 
his lips those comforting and gracious words : 
" Daughter, be of good comfort ; thy faith hath 
made thee whole. Go in peace." Her faith 
has been the means of her cure ; but it was 
faith in act: and that act was none other than 



HO IV TO BEGIN THE RELIGIOUS LIEE. 13 

comincr and touching the hem of the Lord's 
garment. 

Upon this act, then, — touching the hem of 
the Lord's garment, — hangs the whole signifi- 
cance of this event. That it is an act of great 
spiritual import, whose efficacy lies deeper 
than in the mere outward transaction, and is 
grounded on some interior truth which the act 
itself only typifies, is what every one must 
admit who believes that this narrative is 
written for our edification in spiritual things ; 
since it would be otherwise not only wholly 
meaningless to us, — inasmuch as we can see 
no rational connection between touching a 
garment and healing a plague, but, more- 
over, since it presents to us a means of cure 
which it is utterly impossible for us now to 
enjoy in a literal manner. And that it was 
no mere accident or single occurrence of the 
kind, grounded only in the momentary conceit 
of the woman, follows from the statement in 
another place, that " they sent out t7tto all the 



1 4 THE HEM OF HIS GARMENT; OR, 

country round about and brought unto Him all 
that were diseased, and besought Him that they 
might only touch the hem of his garment ; and 
as many as touched were made perfectly whole!' 
What, then, is the spiritual act typified by 
touching the hem of the Lord's garment ? We 
know, in the first place, how the Lord came 
into the world ; namely, as the Word made 
flesh. He is the Divine Truth, made present 
to mankind, to enlighten, to guide, to heal, to 
sanctify. He is the vehicle by which the Di- 
vine Love descends to earth to regenerate and 
raise from death our fallen race. The Father, 
the infinite and eternal Love and Life, dwells in 
Him ; and through Him, as the Truth, this Love 
goes forth in wondrous deeds of mercy and 
power, overcoming evil of every kind, "healing 
all manner of sickness and disease among the 
people. " Our Lord, as the Incarnate Word, 
becomes thus the clothing of the Divine Love, 
its garment, its form, and visible body. And 
everything our Lord did must, in its spiritual 



HOW TO BEGIN THE RELIGIOUS LIEE. I 5 

significance, point to some operation of the 
Divine Truth as revealed to man. Whatever is 
exterior to the Lord, and appertaining to Him, 
as, in this instance, his garment, must, there- 
fore, refer to this Divine Truth or Word in its 
more external aspect. We may regard the 
Lord's garment, therefore, as typifying natural 
or literal truth, — that kind of truth which clothes 
and contains within itself a wisdom which is 
spiritual and concealed from our sight. It is 
the letter of the Bible, which clothes and con- 
tains within itself a spiritual meaning ; or it is 
the more external moral duties and religious 
acts of life, as, likewise, the vessel and the cover- 
ing of corresponding spiritual duties and acts. 
But the hem of the garment is that which is 
at the bottom and end of all. It may be under- 
stood as the tassel at the corner or the fringe 
all around the border, which, while it is the 
outermost part of all, is yet that which com- 
pletes the form and the beauty of the garment. 
It represents, therefore, that kind of truth 



1 6 THE HEM OF HIS GARMENT; OR, 

which is most external, most natural, which be- 
longs to the sensuous plane of the mind, and 
is connected with our outward experience and 
conduct in this material world. 

That the hem of the garment is made so 
conspicuous in the precious narrative and 
teachings of the gospels is for no other reason 
than because this low, sensuous plane of our 
life is itself so prominent a thing, and one so 
directly in need of the saving precept and 
healing power of the Divine Word. The hem 
of the garment is even more conspicuous in 
the instructions of the Levitical law. We read 
of the priest's garment, that " they made upon 
the hems of the robe pomegranates of blue, and 
purple, and scarlet, and twined linen. And 
they 7nade bells of pure gold, and put the bells be- 
tween the pomegranates upon the hem of the robe, 
round about between the pomegranates ; a bell and 
a pomegranate, a bell and a pomegranate, round 
about the hem of the robe to minister in ; as 
the Lord commanded Moses!' — Ex. xxxix. 24. 



HOW TO BEGIN THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 1 7 

And in another place, " The Lord spake unto 
Moses, saying, Speak tmto the children of Israel, 
and bid them that they make them fringes in the 
borders of their garments throughout their gen- 
erations, and that they put upon the fringe of the 
borders a ribband of blue : and it shall be unto 
you for a fringe, that ye may look upon it, and 
remember all the commandments of the Lord, and 
do them!' — Num. xv. 38. Into what impor- 
tance is this otherwise trifling and insignificant 
matter, the hem or fringe of a garment, thus 
elevated in the Divine Word ! And yet it is 
indicated with beautiful simplicity in both these 
passages just quoted what the spiritual signifi- 
cance of this fringe or border is ; for of the one 
it is said it shall be so made for the robe to 
minister in, — that is, the proper symbol of the 
Divine Truth as revealed and dispensed to 
man ; and of the other, that it shall remind 
them of the commandments of the Lord, that 
they are to be obeyed. Seeing this intimate con- 
nection between the hem of the garment to 

2* 



1 3 THE HEM OF HIS GARMENT; OR, 

the ministration of the Divine Truth and its 
observance, we shall now no longer wonder at 
seeing the hem of the Lord's garment being 
that medium by which his saving power goes 
forth. We can begin to understand at least 
how it was, and how it still is, spiritually a fact 
that "as many as touched the hem of his gar- 
ment were made perfectly whole/' 

It is said of our Lord, that as soon as the 
woman touched the hem of his garment He 
perceived that virtue was gone out of Him. 
And this leads us to a hasty glance at that 
sublime and far-reaching topic, — the saving 
power of God as exerted by means of his 
incarnation in our human flesh and nature. 
The Lord descended, as we have already 
seen, as the Divine Truth, not separate from 
the Divine Love, but to make way for the 
Divine Love to descend into the hearts of 
men. The Father was in Him and did the 
works that He did. " God was in Christ re- 
conciling the world unto Himself." This He 



HOW TO BEGIN THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 19 

did by overcoming error with truth, and evil 
with good ; by lifting the chains of hell from 
the degraded and perishing souls of men, and 
opening their eyes to heavenly prospects, and 
implanting pure and heavenly motives in their 
hearts. Why — the question always has arisen, 
and will frequently arise from the natural 
reason — why could not God do this in heaven 
without coming into this world and assuming 
the very flesh, and entering into the life itself 
of us mortals, with all its corrupt tendencies, 
its temptations to sin, its sufferings, even the 
most painful ? The answer is, that between 
the high realm of heaven and the souls of 
men on earth a thick cloud of wickedness, yea, 
a host of evil spirits, had stretched itself out, and 
hell, like a great shadow of death, brooded over 
the entire race of man. Through such a cor- 
rupt and malignant atmosphere of evil the 
rays of the heavenly sun — the saving influ- 
ences of the Divine Love — could no longer 
come down to men. The Prince of darkness 



20 THE HEM OF HIS GARMENT; 0R y 

and sin reigned over all the world. Then the 
Lord in his own omnipotence, Himself came a 
Light into the world, that whosoever should 
come to the light might be saved. Dispersing 
all these corrupted mediums, He became in his 
revealed Truth Himself the one great medium 
of the Divine Love and life to the souls of men ; 
He put to flight these legions of the enemy; He 
scattered the darkness in which men had been 
groping ; He opened again the clear depths 
of heaven, and in Him the sun of righteous- 
ness arose with healing in his wings. That 
nothing might stand between Him and our 
humanity, in its lowest, most sensuous, most 
external state, He Himself entered into this 
very humanity of ours, fallen, corrupt, ready 
to perish : yea, the hem of his garment swept 
indeed the very 4 ust °f the earth we tread. 
He brought his saving light and grace not 
only into the lowest social condition of our 
human life, but also into its extreme spiritual 
prostration, being tempted in every way that 



HOW TO BEGIN THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 21 

mortal man is tempted, and yet overcoming 
with his Divine power all temptation, and thus 
conquering for us liberty and the hope of 
salvation. It was to reach man in this world 
that God Himself came into the world; it was 
to rescue man in his carnal, earthly estate that 
He put on this carnal, earthly nature, and in it 
fought against our common foes ; it was to 
heal, to succor, to save man in his most de- 
graded and lifeless condition, that He clothed 
Himself with our own degraded and perishing 
humanity. Into this, even to its lowest and 
most sensuous extremes, He brought his Di- 
vine life and power. His own humanity be- 
came glorified and Divine throughout, so that 
He could say of his own glorified, risen body, 
" Behold my hands and my feet." This de- 
scent of the Lord with all the power of his 
Divinity, to heal and to save, into the very 
lowest plane of our human life and nature, 
and the operation of his power through this 
assumed humanity, as a medium, is what is 



THE HEM OF HIS GARMENT; OR, 

illustrated by the healing" virtue that went 
forth from Him when the hem of his garment 
was touched. For, as then the mere corporeal 
touch was sufficient to the imparting- of an in- 
fluence healing- to physical disease, so now can 
man be spiritually healed by the Divine grace 
immediately imparted to him from the Lord's 
Divine Humanity. " Touch me and see : for a 
spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me 
have." It is by touching the glorified, natural 
degree of the Divine Humanity that we are 
saved ! And we come into contact with the 
Lord by observing in humility and in faith 
the least and the most external of the Lord's 
commandments. 

This may seem at first thought an easier 
way, if anything, oi being spiritually made 
whole, than was that simple act by which the 
woman was physically healed. But let us 
look at the subject practically and see if it in- 
deed be so. Not that it is desirable to make 
the religious life appear more arduous than it 



HOW TO BEGIN THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 23 

is, but that, be it easy or not, we come at the 
facts and practical reality of it. 

Now, first of all, two things are demanded 
of us, — faith and action. That is, that we no 
longer look to human physicians, to any human 
evidence or power, as such, for the cure of 
our spiritual disease, but to look humbly, 
prayerfully, and confidently to the Lord for 
the succor we need, and then make an earn- 
est, determined effort to do that which, on 
our part, is needful as a medium of his work- 
ing in us. Now this is itself just that which 
the natural mind is unwilling and finds it hard 
to do. It cannot readily convince itself that 
its own selfish and worldly motives and ends 
are not those which will conduce to real hap- 
piness. It goes on consulting year after year 
these human physicians, its love of wealth, of 
power, of distinction, of good reports, of the 
favor of men and their flatteries, — happy, in- 
deed, if, like the woman of the text, it spends 
all it has, tries its every art and endeavor, 



24 THE HEM OF HIS GARMENT; OR, 

only to find itself at last nothing helped and 
only growing worse. 

Then, looking above, to the Divine mercy 
and power for aid, it must begin to act, to do 
something with persevering effort ; and what 
shall this be? It must be an opening of 
our hearts to the healing influence of the 
Lord by reforming our outward, conscious, 
voluntary conduct. We must touch the hem 
of the Divine garment of truth by beginning 
to obey the Divine commandments in our daily 
conduct. We must bring our actual life into 
contact with the Divine truth as applicable to 
it. We must apply the Ten Commandments 
to the reforming of the conduct of our own 
minds and bodies ; for this external sense of 
the Commandments is the hem of the Lord's 
garment; it is the border that shapes, holds in, 
and gives strength to all the inner and spir- 
itual truth we can receive. The hem is, as we 
have said, the Divine truth in the sensuous or 
most external degree; but this means, of course, 



HOW TO BEGIN THE RELIGIOUS LIFE, 25 

that aspect of the Divine truth that is appli- 
cable to the external conduct of our lives to 
whatever degree of spiritual advancement we 
have attained. For spiritual truth always be- 
comes external and natural in our voluntary 
conduct and acts. We touch the hem of the 
Lord's robe when we think of and obey his 
Word in the little common duties of every 
day, when we correct ourselves in little faults 
and faithfully perform little duties. 

Take, then, the Divine precepts of the Deca- 
logue, and touch the hem of each holy truth. 
First: we must worship no idols. Wherein, 
then, in our conduct are we practicing idol- 
atry ? If we do not, with the pagans, wor- 
ship images of stone or brass, it does not fol- 
low that this commandment has no literal force 
with us ; for its hem, its external application, is 
just there where it strikes our actual conduct. 
If we are not worshiping brazen images, nor 
sun, nor moon, what, then, are we worshiping 
in our acts ? Are we not worshiping, as a 
b 3 



26 THE HEM OF HIS GARMENT; OR, 

God wealth, fashion, fame ; or some pet scheme 
and creation of our own minds; or some 
human idol whose favor we regard before that 
of God, in whose devotion we forget all the 
duties and obligations of religion ? And take 
the second : Thou shall not blaspheme. Are 
we given to open blasphemy, to using profane 
language, to making light of holy names and 
things ? Then begin at once to stop this prac- 
tice : touch this garment on its hem, and vir- 
tue will go forth from the Lord into the soul 
to make us love and reverence his name and 
Word. Third : Keep holy the Sabbath. Are you 
a Sabbath-breaker, doing your own sensual 
and worldly pleasure, and thinking your own 
thoughts on the Lord's day, and neglecting 
the holy ordinances of his Church, omitting to 
pray to Him, to lift your mind to heavenly 
things, to read his Word, to go to church, and 
humbly, reverently, worship Him in word of 
mouth and on your bended knee ? Then be- 
gin here to reform, and be assured that the 



HO IV TO BEGIN THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 2J 

Lord will help you, and give you new strength 
and life, in ways and in measure that you 
knew not of. And so with the others. Are 
you lacking in honor to your earthly parents, 
in obedience to the authorities set over you 
in spiritual and temporal things, in reverence 
and grateful love for the Church as your spir- 
itual mother, and to God as your Father in 
heaven ? Are you a murderer ? if not in 
bloody act, then in revengeful feelings, in 
hatred and ill will, which we know, if unre- 
strained by outward laws and penalties, would 
soon run into the act itself? Are you an adul- 
terer? if not actually, still, in your mental con- 
duct, in your unclean thoughts and desires ? 
Are you a liar, a slanderer of your neighbor, 
a bearer of false testimony, a deceiver, dis- 
honest in your dealings with your fellow-man? 
Are you envious and covetous, dissatisfied with 
your own lot, and complaining that your neigh- 
bors enjoy what you do not ? 

These are precepts which, no one can deny, 



28 THE HEM OF HIS GARMENT; OR, 

do strike at the actual, every-day conduct of 
us all. They are no abstractions ; no vague, 
shapeless, unclothed ideals of truth or religion ; 
they are the visible, tangible garment of right- 
eousness which the Saviour wore, and wore for 
us to touch, and, indeed, for us to touch upon 
the hem! By bringing our life into contact 
and conformity with these plain, literal truths, 
we open a way by which the saving grace of 
God can descend into our inner lives and re- 
generate us. And without this actual shun- 
ning of our natural evils of life as sins, — that is, 
out of faith in the Lord and in obedience to 
Him, — we cannot receive inwardly any spirit- 
ual help, any substantial religious life, with its 
real joys and everlasting blessings. Without 
this external obedience, this religion in our 
daily life, — its words, its motives, and its acts, — 
all that vague and fanciful notion within us 
which we call spiritual religion, which, with a 
vast array of truths never put to practice, and 
of good things which the heart, if the truth be 



HOW TO BEGIN THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 29 

spoken, has never had the least desire for, 
floats about in the imagination and shows itself 
in fine and learned or pious discourse, — all 
this is but a garment without a hem, ragged 
and shapeless, and liable to be torn into tatters 
by the first catch of strong temptation with 
which it comes in contact. 

What we all need in the midst of the pre- 
tentious and ambitious life of this world is true 
humility, and faith in the great power and value 
of patient effort in doing these external but 
actual and practical duties of religion. It would 
be a fine thing to be reformed at once, — to be 
made in an instant all spiritual, without know- 
ing temptations any more, nor needing the 
outward constraints of religious obligation ! 
So exclaims that same vain mind that wonders 
why Almighty God came down from heaven, 
put on our miserable humanity, suffered, and 
died, in order to redeem man from Satan's 
power. But let us be thankful that God did 
so come down, that man might even touch his 

3* 



30 THE HEM OF HIS GARMENT. 

robe and be healed ; that his Word is so plainly 
revealed to us, and his religious precepts are 
so practically and so closely applied to our 
present condition and needs that all we have to 
do is to lay hold of them in humility and in faith, 
and thereby come into spiritual conjunction with 
the Glorious Body of our Lord Himself, and 
feel the healing and life-renewing power of his 
Divine Presence. What good comfort is there, 
indeed, in the truth that if w r e begin to put 
away a single evil forbidden in one of the Ten 
Commandments, and because God forbids, in 
place of that evil God puts a desire for the 
opposite virtue into the heart; that thus we 
cannot touch the hem of the Lord's garment, 
be it ever so secretly, so silently, but that virtue 
from the Lord will actually go forth into our 
souls; but that He will turn and look upon us, 
— will know him who has done this thine : and 
will then not let us depart till He have given 
us his blessing, " Go in peace !" 



II. 

©he (fttmntion of f e£tts fflhttet; #v, (&o&'g S^tcnt ta 
Pan. ^ Peditatiou to itew %$m f $ §ag. 



77z<? ^#/£ <?/* ^ generation of Jesus Christ, the son of 
David, the son of Abraham. — St. Matt. L i. 



SUCH is the opening verse of the New 
Testament of our Lord and Saviour 
Jesus Christ. As the heading, or title, of what 
is to follow, it calls to mind the name of the 
first book of the Old Testament, — the Book 
of Genesis, — for in the Greek tongue the 
words are precisely similar, and were the 
translation of the words in both cases uniform 
we should read, The Book of the Genesis of 
Jesus Christ; or, on the other hand, we should 
call the first book of Moses, the Book of the 
Generations. Indeed, in the second chapter 
of this book, where the history of the creation 

3 1 



32 THE GENERATION OF JESUS CHRIST; OR, 

is briefly summed up, we read, " These are the 
generations of the heavens and of the earth 
when they were created, in the day that the 
Lord God made the earth and the heavens. " 

Thus are our minds called by the very 
opening words of our Lord's gospel to the 
contemplation of the Eternal God, of Him 
who is the Alpha and the Omega, the Begin- 
ning and the End, the First and the Last, the 
Son of David, the Son of Abraham ! We 
strive in vain to follow in thought these 
words, leading far, far back into the dim 
realms of antiquity. The book of the genesis 
of Jesus Christ ! We pause in silent adora- 
tion before the Infinite and the Eternal, to 
whom a thousand years are but as yesterday 
when it is past, and as a watch in the night. 
We seem to hear, borne along through ages 
and ages, the heavenly voice, "In the Begin- 
ning was the Word, and the Word was with 
God, and the Word was God" ! 

The history of the going forth of our Lord's 



GOD'S DESCENT TO MAN. 33 

Humanity, which is contained in this book of 
the generation of Jesus Christ, will not be an 
unfitting theme for the Christian's contempla- 
tion at the beginning of the new year, when 
once more the returning sun calls to our 
minds the dawn of a new creation, a new birth, 
or regeneration of all things living, and while 
the remembrance is yet fresh in the mind, of 
the birth in this world of the same Lord and 
Saviour, the only True God and Eternal Life. 
In this Divine and solemn doctrine, couched 
in the mysterious symbol of a human gene- 
alogy, and revealed from heaven by the Lord 
alone, may we not greet with understanding, 
and with joy of heart, the light of a new 
heaven and a new earth, — the everlasting light 
which, as the glory of God, shineth in his Holy 
Jerusalem ! 

"The Book of the Genesis, or Generation 
of Jesus Christ/' — that this cannot have refer- 
ence to a physical birth is evident from the 
passage already quoted from Genesis, wherein 



34 THE GENERA TION OF JESUS CHRIST; OR, 

mention is made of the generations of the 
heavens and the earth, and also from the fact 
that our Lord's genealogy is not human, but 
Divine, as is expressly declared in the words 
which the Angel Gabriel spoke to Mary, say- 
ing, "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, 
and the power of the Highest shall overshadow 
thee; therefore, also, that holy thing which shall 
be born of thee shall be called the Son of God." 
If, then, it be not a physical or natural gen- 
eration here referred to, it must, unless this 
chapter is wholly meaningless, be a spiritual 
generation. And here we have abundantly 
confirmed the Church's doctrine of the spirit- 
ual sense of the word. For it is alone accord- 
ing to this spiritual sense contained in the 
literal sense that the letter of this passage of 
the Word can in any wise be understood; since 
not only the declaration in the first verse, that 
Jesus Christ is the son of David, is in direct con- 
tradiction, when literally understood, to those 
passages which declare Him to be the Son of 



GOD'S DESCENT TO MAN 35 

God, but there are also many other difficulties, 
particularly the omission of many names in the 
genealogical ladder, in which the student of the 
mere letter is unavoidably involved. And it 
may be remarked here, that if any portion of 
the whole Word of God is to be chosen as a 
standard or example of its historical accuracy, 
and as a criterion whereby to determine the 
nature of its contents, surely all will agree that 
none other can more entirely serve this end 
than the very words which describe the gen- 
esis, origin, or birth of our Lord Jesus Christ ; 
namely, the first chapter of Matthew. Here 
the records of the Old Testament are summed 
up into a brief opening passage of the New. 
The line of family names, reaching back to 
the time of Abraham, is here recorded, with 
certain omissions, as the Book of the Generation 
of Jesus Christ. And yet Jesus Christ was 
the son of no man, but was conceived by the 
Holy Ghost, and born of the Virgin Mary be- 
fore yet Joseph her husband knew her. Surely 



36 THE GENERATION OF JESUS CHRIST; OR, 

the connection between the history of the Old 
Testament and that of the New must lie deeper 
than in the mere letter. For if we hold to the 
letter alone, we have no more reason for call- 
ing Jesus Christ the son of David, of the seed 
of Abraham, than had the disbelieving Jews of 
his time for calling Him the son of Joseph, the 
carpenter of Nazareth. Naturally speaking, 
our Lord is not David's son ; for both naturally 
and spiritually He is the Son of God, and here- 
in He differs from all others born of woman, — 
herein lies his Eternal and Adorable Divinity. 
But spiritually speaking, He is the son of 
David and of Abraham. Here, too, is to be ob- 
served the sublime and holy coincidence of the 
Divine and human, the spiritual and the literal, 
presented to us in the arrangement of God's 
Word. Throughout the whole Word, with 
rare, and perhaps this only exception, the literal 
sense stands apart from and independent, as it 
were, of the spiritual sense, and may be view r ed 
and studied in its own purely external char- 



GOD'S DESCENT TO MAN 37 

acter. And this is because of the three dis- 
crete degrees of all order and creation, — the 
celestial, the spiritual, and the natural. 

Generally speaking, not only in the works of 
God's natural creation, but also in the literal 
or natural sense of his Word, we see but the 
lowest degree without recognizing in it any- 
thing of the higher and interior degrees. But 
when our Lord came into the world to assume 
our humanity, to clothe Himself with our flesh, 
and thus to bring down into the lowest degree 
of man his own Divine Essence, and to reveal 
Himself to the world as Immanuel, God with 
us, these higher and internal degrees could no 
longer remain wholly concealed, even from 
man. Being brought forth and revealed by 
the Lord in the natural or literal plane, they 
must break forth in their own light and splen- 
dor upon the world, and remain before men 
evermore the imperishable monuments of the 
Incarnate Word. Now, just such a breaking 
forth or revelation of the internal or spiritual 

4 



38 THE GENERATION OF JESUS CHRIST; OR, 

degree in the literal or natural is displayed in 
this opening verse of the Lord's new Gospel, 
which proclaims the central and crowning event 
of all history, — the Birth of Jesus Christ. For 
here, if the Divine Word is seen and recognized 
at all, it must be in its spiritual, and not in its 
natural sense. The whole matter of the accept- 
ance of the Bible as the Book of truth rests, we 
may say, on this point. If it is to be interpreted 
only according to its letter, then is it not true, 
but contradictory and meaningless ; if it be the 
true book, and Divine in its origin, it must be 
understood and interpreted according to an 
internal and spiritual sense. Up to this time, 
throughout all the history of the Old Covenant, 
the literal or merely representative sense could 
be understood and believed in its own charac- 
ter. The history of the creation, the Ten Com- 
mandments, the warnings and promises of the 
prophets, could all be received, blindly, per- 
haps, and not very intelligently, but still as 
generally consistent and harmonious, even in 



GOD'S DESCENT TO MAN 39 

their literal sense alone. But this was at an 
end when the new Gospel came, and the nat- 
ural degree of truth no longer served to hide 
entirely the degrees within it, but rather to 
reveal the Highest, even the Divine, so that 
" all flesh should see the Salvation of God!" 
The story of Abraham and his descendants, 
even to Joseph, might have been understood 
in the natural sense alone, without any knowl- 
edge of the spiritual reference to the Lord 
contained therein, Not so when our Lord 
Himself was born of Mary, while she yet knew 
not a man, and was called the Son of God. 
Then we could no longer say with literal truth 
that Jesus Christ is Joseph's son, nor David's 
son, nor Abraham's. Then the natural veil is 
lifted, and our eyes fall upon the Holy of Holies 
within, and behold there our transfigured Lord, 
his garments white as the light, his face shining 
as the sun ! And out of the cloud a voice 
cometh, saying, " This is my beloved Son ; hear 
ye Him I" 



*40 THE GENERATION OF JESUS CHRIST; OR, 

The miracles which our Lord performed 
may also be regarded as the manifestation of 
the higher degrees in the lowest degree of 
nature. The marvelous healing of the sick, 
turning water into wine, multiplying a thou- 
sand-fold the few loaves of bread, and raising 
the dead to life, what are these works but 
the manifest presence of certain spiritual and 
celestial powers in the natural world, conse- 
quent upon our Lord's assuming the human- 
ity and living as a man upon our earth? 

Having thus seen how that the manifesta- 
tion of God to the world, or of the Divinity in 
the Humanity, necessitates, at the same time, a 
recognition of the Scriptures as true in a higher 
and Diviner sense than that of merely literal 
history, let us now consider for a moment what 
are spiritual generations, and what is the spir- 
itual genealogy here recorded. What spiritual 
generation is we already know from the Word 
itself. To be born again is to be born of the 
Spirit. A new birth is a spiritual birth, as our 



GOD'S DESCENT TO MAN 4 1 

Lord Himself teacheth us. " Except a man be 
born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter 
the kingdom of God. That which is born of the 
flesh is flesh ; that which is born of the Spirit 
is spirit. >, A spiritual birth must be a pro- 
duction of those things which are spiritual ; 
and these may be summed up as constituting 
the voluntary and the intellectual parts of the 
mind. The generations recorded in the Word 
all have the spiritual significance of the pro- 
duction of some new state of goodness, in the 
will, and of truth, in the intellect, or of their 
opposites. And the " book of the generations 
of Jesus Christ ,, can mean, therefore, only the 
" Divine Word, treating, throughout, of the 
spiritual productions of faith and love derived 
from the Lord." Of these spiritual produc- 
tions we are afforded, in the Arcana Ccelestia 
of Swedenborg, numerous examples, in the 
explanation there given of the internal sense 
of the Book of Genesis. 

We know that Abraham represents the 

4* 



42 THE GENERA T10N OF JESUS CHRIST; OR, 

Lord's Celestial, or Divine Essence ; that by 
Isaac's birth is represented the production of 
the Divine Rational plane in the Lord's mind 
when He assumed the humanity ; and the 
birth of Jacob, Isaac's son, we know to signify 
the production of the Divine Natural plane, 
through the rational or spiritual, and from the 
inmost essential Divinity. Abraham, Isaac, and 
Jacob represent the three Degrees of the 
Lord's Nature, — the celestial, the spiritual, the 
natural. And it is said, in Matthew, that Jesus 
Christ is the son of David, the son of Abra- 
ham, because Abraham represents that essen- 
tial Divinity which alone is the Father of our 
Lord, and because David, like Isaac, repre- 
sents the spiritual degree, which is next to the 
celestial, and the medium between the celestial 
and the natural degree ; which natural degree 
our Lord Himself represents in his assumed 
humanity, and as the Son of man. In this 
short verse, then, we have summed up the 
entire contents of the following sixteen verses, 



GOB'S DESCENT TO MAN. 43 

or the names of the descendants of Abraham, 
down to Joseph, the husband of Mary ; not to 
say of the entire Word itself. 

For in a certain sense we may regard the 
Word as treating only of the production of 
these three degrees of faith and charity in the 
natural, spiritual, and celestial mind, repre- 
sented by Jesus Christ, David, and Abraham. 
Thus, the first verse seems to only have its 
lesson repeated in the fifteen verses which fol- 
low it. But there is this important difference 
in the two genealogies, — the first, beginning 
with Jesus Christ, ends with Abraham ; the 
other, beginning with Abraham, ends with Jo- 
seph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born 
Jesus, who is called Christ. Here we have the 
ascending and the descending series. In the 
one account, the descent of the celestial into 
the natural ; and in the other, the progression 
from the natural degree up to the celestial, — 
thus fulfilling the words of our Lord Himself, 
" No man hath ascended into heaven but He thai 



44 THE GENERA TION OF JESUS CHRIST; OR, 

came down from heaven, even the Son of man, 
which is in heaven" "And as Moses lifted up 
the serpent in the wilderness, even so must 
the Son of man" (or He that came down from 
heaven) "be lifted up." Such is likewise the 
meaning of that mystic vision which Jacob saw 
in his dream, of a ladder reaching up to heaven, 
on which angels were ascending and descend- 
ing. Thus, in truth, does the Divine Truth 
descend into our minds from the Divine Love, 
through the spiritual into the natural plane, 
that there, taking on the forms of knowledge 
and sense, and being engrafted into our mere 
earthly life, it may glorify and transform them 
into its own spiritual beauty, and thus lead them 
up the shining ladder to heaven once more. 

But we should bear in mind that the long 
list of names contained in the fifteen verses 
which follow the verse quoted are not without 
their holy meaning, — a meaning which, doubt- 
less, the angels of heaven comprehend, how- 
ever feebly we may do so. All names in the 



GOD'S DESCENT TO MAN 45 

Scriptures mean spiritual qualities or attri- 
butes. We have seen what is the spiritual 
significance of Abraham, of David or Isaac, 
and of Jacob,- — namely, that they represent in 
the Lord the three planes of his mind into 
which the Divinity of the Father descended in 
assuming our human nature. But of all the 
names which remain, representing all the pos- 
sible qualities and variations of spiritual states 
of which our nature is capable, and which were 
passed through by the Lord in the process of 
glorifying his Humanity, of all these we can 
know and understand but little. Let us, then, 
read the concluding verse of this book of the 
generation of Jesus Christ; "So all the gen- 
erations from Abraham to David are fourteen 
generations ; and from David until the carrying 
away into Babylon are fourteen generations ; 
and from the carrying away into Babylon unto 
Christ are fourteen generations. ,, Herein is 
contained a wonderful lesson in spiritual things 
which we can but glance at here. It is a history 



46 THE GENERATION OF JESUS CHRIST; OR, 

of a decline, a degeneracy, or fall of man from a 
celestial into a natural state of life ; through 
which decline the Lord, in his redeeming love, 
follows after the wandering soul, — goes out and 
seeks the lost sheep ! The whole genealogy is 
divided into three periods of fourteen genera- 
tions each. The number fourteen, being seven 
added to itself, signifies the holiness of the union 
of goodness and truth, in their descent into 
the degree of the Lord's mind, represented by 
the succeeding generations. There being three 
of such holy and perfect periods, signifies that 
the series is complete, that the progression is 
accomplished through all the three degrees of 
our Lord's nature, and thus that the Lord's 
Divinity is fully incarnated in, and united to, 
his Humanity. The first or celestial degree in- 
cludes the fourteen generations from Abraham 
to David. It is from David the King, represent- 
ing the Lord as to his Divine Truth, that the 
spiritual period commences, and this ends with 
the carrying away into Babylon, — that is, the 



GO US DESCENT TO MAN. 47 

destruction of the spiritual mind through the 
love of dominion. Then, in the natural and 
selfish will, begins the lowest period, which ends 
with Mary, — the humble virgin of Nazareth, — 
of whom was born Christ, — the Redeemer and 
Saviour of fallen and sinful man ! But, with 
this descending scale, we must close our study 
of the sacred record. The glorious ascent 
heavenward is described in all that follows 
in the gospels. Let this be the Christian's 
guide and companion henceforth. Let him 
begin with the new year a new spiritual gene- 
alogy which shall record his constant regen- 
eration of the Holy Spirit of God : and so let 
him bring down into the lowest and most ex- 
ternal plane of his life the heavenly truths which 
the Divine Love begets in his mind, that, like 
the Son of man, he may be lifted up, and at- 
tain at last to the blessed land which God hath 
promised to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, 
and to their seed forever. 



in the ®tottttrtt. 



K?#, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also, that 
the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed. — St. Luke 

THESE words were spoken to Mary, the 
mother of the Lord, by the aged Simeon, 
a just and devout man, who had waited for 
consolation in Israel. It had been revealed to 
him by the Holy Ghost that ere his death he 
should behold the Lord's Christ. And so it 
came true, that he was led by the Holy Spirit 
to go into the temple at Jerusalem at the 
same time that Joseph and Mary brought in 
the child Jesus to do for Him after the custom 
of the law. The requisite forty days had 
elapsed since the birth of her child, and Mary 
4 8 



THE SWORD IN MARY'S SOUL, 49 

had come to present Him to the Lord, and also 
to offer the humble sacrifice of a pair of turtle- 
doves, or two young pigeons. It is not un- 
likely that there were many worshipers there, 
going and coming in the temple, and few would 
notice this humble company, — the poor man 
and woman bringing in their little infant, up 
from the rural town of Bethlehem. And we 
can easily believe that Joseph and Mary mar- 
veled, indeed, when they saw this aged man, 
Simeon, come forward and take their Child up 
in his arms* and bless God, and say, " Lord, 
now lettest Thou thy servant depart in peace : 
for mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which 
Thou hast prepared before the face of all 
people ; a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the 
glory of thy people Israel !" And then the 
old man turns and blesses them, and says to 
Mary, " Behold, this Child is set for the fall 
and rising again of many in Israel ; and for a 
sign which shall be spoken against ; yea, a 
sword shall pierce through thy own soul also, 
c 5 



9 

50 THE SWORD IN MARY'S SOUL; OR, 

that the thoughts of many hearts may be re- 
vealed /" 

Words strange and wonderful, — to Mary 
that heard them then, to all in Christian lands 
who have for hundreds of years heard them 
repeated, and feel that here was the Holy 
Ghost speaking and prophesying of things 
deeper than for the wisdom of man to search 
out or to foresee ! 

" Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own 
soul also, that the thoughts of many hearts 
may be revealed. " 

Simeon spake not from himself, but from 
the Divine Light which shone in his mind by 
the mercy of that God who had rewarded his 
patient and faithful waiting by revealing to 
him at last the Anointed, — the Messiah that 
was come to save the world. Whether Sim- 
eon himself knew all the deep meaning of 
those solemn words spoken to Mary at that 
time, it is not needful to inquire. They were 
uttered in a state of Divine illumination ; they 



DIVINE JUDGMENTS IN THE CHURCH. 5 I 

contain a prophecy of Divine Truth concern- 
ing our Incarnate Lord, and not the foreseeing 
of any man. And the prophecy has been ful- 
filled, and is being fulfilled wherever the In- 
carnate Word, the Lord's Christ, has been 
proclaimed; wherever before the eyes of a lost 
and dying world has been lifted up that " sign 
which shall be spoken against !" 

I have seen, as probably have many of my 
readers, certain pious pictures representing 
the Virgin Mary with her heart transfixed 
with daggers,— intended to embody the literal 
idea of Simeon's prophecy, and to represent 
to us the sorrows which she, as the mother of 
the Lord, endured in beholding the suffering, 
and, at last, the crucifixion of our Saviour. It 
was natural that men, seeing only the letter of 
God's Word, should thus interpret and contem- 
plate this prophecy. But such is not the idea 
which is here presented to the spiritual under- 
standing of the Church. Here is a prophecy 
far deeper and wider than of any mere per- 



52 THE SWORD IN MARY'S SOUL; OR, 

sonal or temporary significance. The words 
spoken by the Holy Ghost, through Simeon, 
were not spoken to Mary as a single individual, 
but as representing the Mary of all the ages to 
come, the Church as to her affection of truth 
and goodness, wherein she conceives the Word 
of God and bears a man-child, — a child born 
of water and of the Spirit for the salvation of 
the world. Mary is the Church of the Lord 
upon earth. Her sorrows, her trials, are the 
sorrows and trials of the Church, both in gen- 
eral and in each particular soul. And the 
daggers which pierce her soul are those which, 
from that day to this, and never more than at 
this day, have pierced, and are piercing, the 
inner spiritual being of the Church, to the end 
that the thoughts of many hearts may be re- 
vealed and the judgment of the Lord be 
executed in the earth. 

It is said that Simeon " blessed them, and 
said unto Mary his mother, 'this child is set for 
the fall and rising again of many in Israel. '" 



DIVINE JUDGMENTS IN THE CHURCH. S3 

Few have known or duly reflected on die fact 
that when God came to save die world by 
being born a man on our earth, He came as 
die Word, — that is, as the Truth. Many speak 
and treat of the Lord's coming much as if 
nothing w r ere said in the gospels as to how He 
came or what He came for ; all their thoughts 
seem to be centred on the death He died, and 
their only question to be what He died for, — as 
if this were or could be anything apart from the 
same Divine purpose which had ordered his 
birth and his life in this world, with all his Di- 
vine teachings and miraculous deeds of mercy. 
It is true that Christ our Lord died to save 
sinners, but just as true that He was born and 
lived here on earth to save sinners. And the 
Word tells us how and why He was thus born 
and lived and died, and sets forth the true 
" mystery of godliness" and the true " plan of 
salvation" in far other language than that which 
men have invented in their perplexed and often 
misleading doctrines. 

5* 



54 THE SWORD IN MARY'S SOUL; OR, 

It was the Word — that is, the Divine Truth 
— which took on our humanity, to purify and 
glorify it, and make it, in the person of Jesus 
Christ, a Divine Humanity, in which the in- 
dwelling Divinity — the eternal Jehovah — might 
be brought forth to view, and might reach 
down to men in their lowest estates, and 
through which Divine Humanity man might 
have visible and conscious access to the one 
only living and true God. The Word, or the 
Divine Truth, is the sanctuary or holy structure 
of the mind which must be prepared before the 
Lord in his Divine Love — which is the Father 
Himself — can come in. The Word, the Divine 
Truth, is also the light of the world. It is the 
true, the saving light to men's souls, because 
in this Word was Life, — i.e. the eternal Deity, 
the Source of all Life and Being, — mid this Life 
is the light of men. For all light comes from 
heat, and the Divine Truth, Wisdom, or Word, 
is but the shining of this Divine Love — the all- 
creating Warmth — itself. This Divine Fire of 



DIVINE JUDGMENTS IN THE CHURCH. 55 

the eternal Father's Love is the inmost Esse 
of all Being, from which alone everything ce- 
lestial, spiritual, natural, and material has been 
created and made. 

The Word, conceived in Mary by the Holy 
Ghost, — that is, by the Divine Proceeding or 
Operation, — and born into our world a man- 
child, has a Father and a mother, — a Father, 
after his Divine nature ; a mother, after his 
human nature. The Father of the Lord is 
none other than his own Divinity, which is his 
inward soul, — the indivisible, eternal, omnipres- 
ent, omniscient God. The mother of the Lord 
is Mary ; she is called his mother by the evan- 
gelists throughout their gospels, but not by our 
Lord Himself ! Yea, she is a mother, not of 
Him as Divine, but of that part of Him which 
was human, and which He temporarily put on 
at his birth into the world, as a man puts on 
his armor when he goes out to war. The con- 
flict over, the armor is put off, the weapons laid 
aside. Our Lord's glorification accomplished, 



56 THE SWORD IN MARY'S SOUL; OR, 

— his Humanity made truly Divine and united, 
like body to soul, to the eternal Divinity of the 
Father dwelling in Him, — He puts off all the 
merely infirm, the mortal, human, all that He 
had derived from the human mother Mary, and 
He is no more, in any sense, the son of Mary. 
He is wholly Divine, the God and Lord of 
all angels and men, the God whom Mary in 
heaven worships with all her fellow -beings 
there ; beside whom there is no God, no Sav- 
iour, and out of whom there is neither Light 
nor Life for the soul of any creature. 

And the Mary of all ages is, as I have said, 
the Church, or that state of the human mind, 
as to its affection of truth and goodness, which, 
moved and animated by the Holy Spirit of the 
Lord, receives his Word into the ground of a 
good and honest heart, and bringeth forth its 
fruit in patience. The Word of God comes 
down not again in the Divine Person of God 
made visible, but in a spiritual and invisible 
manner, and seeks to be made flesh in the 



DIVINE JUDGMENTS IN THE CHURCH $7 

hearts and the lives of men, and through them 
to be the salvation of the world. Yea, the 
Lord Himself, in his Divine Humanity, is ever 
seeking entrance to the souls of men, that He 
may pour his saving Life and his unspeakable 
blessings down in a great stream of mercy and 
love upon our race and the earth which He 
has given for our abode. But He comes to 
us now, as He even came in times past, as the 
Word, — the Truth. It is by water and the 
Spirit that we may be born anew as sons of 
God, and the water is the truth of faith, and 
the Spirit is the Life from God which flows 
down into our every effort to live according to 
the truth of our faith. 

Blessed were Mary and Joseph, because they 
represented the Church, which has received 
the Word of God and clothed it with a living 
form, a visible body, in the deeds of a righteous 
and merciful life. Blessed is every man, woman, 
and child to whom the Word of God, or even 
a single Truth thereof, has come as a Saviour 
c* 



58 THE SWORD IN MARY'S SOUL; OR, 

descended from heaven seeking a bodv or 
lowest form of activity in the deeds of his or 
her earthly life. But not to bless and give 
thanks only does Simeon speak. The prophetic 
voice of the Holy Spirit has its words of warn- 
ing — of solemn admonition as well — to utter 
to the Mary of all the ages at the joyful mo- 
ment of the Incarnation of the Divine Word. 
The Word of God, God's own Truth, set up 
in the face of human desire and human thought, 
— this is for a sign to be spoken against ! Nat- 
ural selfishness and the reason of the carnal 
sense will not readily abandon their thrones 
for this heavenly King. The angels may sing 
joy to the world, glory in heaven, peace on 
earth ; but He who is come to save the world, 
to be the Word of God acting Himself out in 
the life of our flesh, He knows that He is not 
come, first of all, to bring peace, but a sword. 
First the combat, then the victory, and the 
long- enduring reign of peace and heavenly 
joy. First to drive out error and sin ; first to 



DIVINE JUDGMENTS IN THE CHURCH. 59 

fight with corruptions of heart and mind ; to 
root out old habits of evil desire, evil thought, 
evil speech, and evil act ; to put down Satan, 
with all his filthy and hateful brood, under our 
feet; and then, to let us taste the sweet and 
heavenly delights of peace and righteousness. 
This is the warfare which God's truth, revealed 
to the world in Jesus Christ, w T as to wage in 
the hearts of men for ages to come; the war- 
fare of truth with error, of the holy lessons 
of faith and commandments of religion with 
all the opposing prejudices, persuasions, ex- 
cuses, and reasonings which the love of evil 
could beget out of its own infernal bosom. 
And as all those to whom the truth of God's 
Word comes constitute the Church of the 
Lord in an external sense, and as these are 
they who are to be brought into temptation- 
combats by the Incarnate Word, — therefore it 
is said to Mary, " Yea, a sword shall pierce 
through thy own soul also, that the thoughts 
of many hearts may be revealed." Mary is 



60 THE SWORD IN MARY'S SOUL; OR, 

the Church of the Lord on earth ; the sword 
that pierces her soul is the Truth of God's 
Word, which searches the inmost spiritual life 
of the Church, revealing the thoughts of every 
heart, whether it be for God or against God, 
and thus executing the Divine judgments upon 
earth. So does God's Word come into our 
souls not to bring peace, but a sword. Yea, it 
is the sword that pierces our own soul through. 
For there is nothing in the life of him to whom 
the Word of God has found even the smallest 
entrance which this keen and searching blade 
will not pierce through. The light is there ; 
the creatures of darkness may not flee away ; 
they must stand still and bear the scrutiny of 
this awful Searcher of the hearts and reins ! 

Such is the Divine method of judging and 
of saving a fallen world. It is by the Word 
or the Truth coming into the heart of man, 
cutting him through like a dagger, to the in- 
most consciousness, revealing his thoughts 
and his desires and aims, whether they be 



DIVINE JUDGMENTS IN THE CHURCH. 6 1 



eood or evil, and enabling him in freedom to 
accept or reject his salvation, in either admit- 
ting the Divine Truth to reign in him as his 
true Lord and King, or closing the heart 
against it in the voluntary and deliberate com- 
mission of sin. 

And that a man may know his sins, the 
Light breaks in upon him, revealing the 
thoughts of his heart. How can a man know 
what is wrong except by knowing what is 
right ? and how can he know that a thing is 
right except he know that it is commanded by 
that God who alone is Good and True, and 
who governs from perfect Love and Wisdom ? 
The Word of God brings to man this light ; 
and when his thoughts stand revealed in this 
light, then is the Sword piercing through his 
soul, and God Himself is come to judge the 
earth in him ! 

How long and how mysteriously have men 
talked of the Judgment to come, and of 
the great day when the hearts of all shall be 

6 



62 THE SWORD IN MARY'S SOUL; OR, 

opened in the sight of God and the angels ! 
But will they not learn that the Judgment-day 
is come ; that it is here, now, wherever his 
Word is preached and read and thought of 
by man ? When a Truth of the Word enters 
a man's thoughts in the moment of decision 
between a right and a wrong act, then are the 
thoughts of his heart revealed before God. 
Whenever a man discovers his sins committed, 
and, bewailing his weakness, and yet hoping 
in the Lord, he resolves henceforth to more 
carefully resist the evil which is his besetting 
sin, then is the child Jesus set for that mail s 
fall and rising again! When our sinful desires 
rebel against that which our faith teaches, 
and the Word of God becomes offensive and 
its counsels obnoxious to us, then is revealed 
to our eyes that sign which shall be spoken 
against. And when, in reflecting on the life 
we lead, we feel conscious of the long conflict 
between right and wrong ; between the heav- 
enly and the earthly motives at work in our 



DIVINE JUDGMENTS IN THE CHURCH. 63 

souls ; when we trace the operation of the 
Lord's Holy Spirit, striving through his Word 
and the Church to lift our life to heavenly aims ; 
and when we behold, on the other hand, 
the cunning and soft seductions whereby, 
through the avenues of the world and its pleas- 
ures, the powers of evil are drawing us away 
to number us with their own ; — then, and in 
the oft-repeated crisis of doubt, of struggle, 
of spiritual combat, the sword pierces, through 
our own souls also, that the thoughts of our 
hearts may be revealed ! 

So does the woman Mary, her heart pierced 
with a sword, still stand before us, the true 
image of the Lord's Church upon earth in 
her time of temptation, of combat, and of 
Divine judgment ! 

We neither may, nor should w 7 e hope to 
escape that sword which will cleave our life in 
two, showing what in us belongs to God and 
what to the devil. But we should ever pray 
that we may have strength given us from the 



64 THE SWORD IN MARY'S SOUL, 

Lord, when we know what is from Him, to 
hold fast to it, that He in whose sight all the 
thoughts of our hearts are constantly re- 
vealed may see some principle of his Blessed 
Word taking form in our actual life, and be- 
coming every new day and every new year 
more really, more truly, more powerfully to us 
a Word of Salvation and of Eternal Life. 



<b\\t Pother of gtm» at ©ana; or, §towilttg m& 
(Dbz&kim the &tttftxtUt of th* f£M& f # gjUflnuf- 
ating ftrAt*« 



^;^ //^ *///>*/ dtay //z<?/r ^/^j a marriage in Cana of Gal- 
ilee ; and the mother of Jesus was there. — St. John ii. i. 



THE history of our Lord's first miracle is 
well known wherever the Holy Gospel has 
been preached. The water changed to wine 
has for ages been in the minds of Christians 
a sublime but mysterious symbol of the glory 
of our Saviour's Divinity as first manifested 
forth to man. But there are other lessons af- 
forded in this sacred narrative for the Church's 
edification than that of the simple act alone of 
changing the water into wine. For those who 
search the Scriptures to find therein eternal 
life it is not the miracle only that will be full 

6* 65 



66 THE MOTHER OF JESUS AT CANA; OR, 

of Divine instruction : every recorded incident 
and circumstance attending the miracle equally 
testifies of the Lord. Thus, while we may 
know for a fact that our Saviour wrought 
somewhere and at some time and amid cer- 
tain company a great miracle, yet we shall 
see comparatively little of the great signifi- 
cance of that miracle, of its deep Divine in- 
tent, except we consider as well that it was in 
Can a of Galilee that it was done ; that it was on 
the third day, at a marriage-feast, and that the 
mother of Jesus was there. That this is the 
case is because the Holy Bible is Divinely in- 
spired, and thus everywhere full of spiritual 
meaning and instruction. Strictly speaking, 
nothing in the whole world of events occurs 
by chance, but the Divine Providence rules 
and controls all things, from the minutest to 
the most extraordinary. How manifestly must 
this be the case in regard to every act of our 
Saviour's life upon earth, which was through- 
out only the acting forth of the Divine Wis- 



HUMILITY AND OBEDIENCE. 6 



dom in word and work ! and how inevitably 
so in that one authentic and Divinely-in- 
spired history of his Life presented to us in 
the Holy Gospel ! Not a feature, then, of this 
narrative of the miracle at Cana is without its 
heavenly meaning and Divine teaching. 

How many subjects are here presented for 
our thoughtful study ! How many lessons 
may the Church learn from year to year, from 
age to age, yea, to all eternity, in contemplat- 
ing this first act of the Lord wherein He mani- 
fested forth his Divine glory to men ! We may 
have often studied the narrative ourselves, or 
heard it expounded in one part or another; 
we may remember now more than one holy 
lesson it has revealed to us in times past ; we 
may recall to mind what the miracle itself is in 
spiritual reality, — namely, the giving oi internal 
in place of external truth, the establishment of 
the spiritual Church with those who were in a 
natural state of obedience and outward charity. 
We may remember why there was set six 



68 THE MOTHER OE JESUS AT CANA; OR, 

water-pots of stone, — namely, because they 
represent the six periods, or work-days, as it 
were, of our purification from sin by obedience 
to the laws of morality. Why, too, these ves- 
sels of stone must be filled with water, because 
we must obey these laws out of regard to their 
Divine authority, — that is, as filled w T ith the 
Divine Truth, and not as coming from man's 
wisdom and prudence. We may then see, 
once more, why this is indeed the first miracle 
which our Saviour wrought before men, and 
why the disciples believed in Him there, — 
namely, because the first step by which a man 
can acquire any real faith in the Lord, or per- 
ceive in any degree the glory of his Divine 
Love and Wisdom, is his obeying externally 
from religious motives the laws of pious and 
moral living. This faithful obedience will 
assuredly result in an internal knowledge and 
love of the truth for its own sake, and thus 
religion will become a thing of the heart and of 
the life. And the Divine Truth thus received 



HUMILITY AND OBEDIENCE. 69 

into the affections of the will is what is meant 
by the Divine Glory manifested forth to the 
believing disciple. 

From so many fruitful topics of reflection let 
us now turn back to the beginning of the nar- 
rative and be content to dwell for the present 
on the simple statement there made, that the 
mother of Jesus was present at the wedding. 

Knowing that in general it is the birth of 
an inward, spiritual religion that is described by 
the entire narrative, a proper understanding of 
this initiatory statement will enable us to see 
more clearly what is that condition in which 
we must all be in order to have the same 
miracle spiritually wrought in us. Cana, in 
Galilee of the Gentiles, is the abode of those in 
all ages and lands who are in little knowledge 
of spiritual truth and religion, but who are in 
the endeavor to live in some measure, at least, 
according to their knowledge of their duty, and 
from motives of obedience to a Divine Being and 
of charity towards their fellow-men. The mar- 



70 THE MOTHER OF JESUS AT CAN A ; OR, 

riage at Cana is none other than that heavenly 
union between the Lord and the Church as it 
exists among these simple-minded, sincere, and 
well-disposed persons. It is the establishment 
among such willing, obedient hearts, who pos- 
sess but little knowledge of spiritual and 
Divine things, it may be, but who, nevertheless, 
from their affection for whatever appears to 
them as truth, receive gladly the truth itself 
when presented to them ; it is the establish- 
ment, among this kind of men, of a true and 
spiritual Church, — a true internal bond be- 
tween God and their lives, — that is repre- 
sentatively set forth in the marriage at Cana 
of Galilee. And, as we read, " the mother of 
Jesus was there." 

Now, it was to act no unimportant part in 
this event that the mother of our Lord was 
present ; and yet no other mark of distinction 
or honor is paid her than that she is specially 
mentioned as being among the wedding-guests. 
Behold, on the other hand, how humble, how 



HUMILITY AXD OBEDIENCE. 7 1 

retiring, how reverently obedient is that be- 
havior which she manifests before her ador- 
able Lord ! Hers is the homely duty to say to 
the Master, as the wine failed, "They have no 
wine;" to hear in meekness his reply, " Woman, 
what have I to do with thee ? mine hour is not 
yet come ;" and in the spirit of unquestioning 
obedience to place the servants of the house- 
hold at the Saviour's command, saying to them, 
"Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.' , 

Who can fail to perceive in this portrayal of 
conduct what qualities of Christian character 
are specially figured forth in Mary, the mother 
of Jesus, at the marriage in Cana? In the first 
place, as a woman, she is a type of all affec- 
tion for what is good, and as a mother, she 
represents the Church as existing with those 
in whom this affection is alive, but who, as 
Galileans, are in ignorance of spiritual and Di- 
vine things. Secondly, we recognize in her 
the pattern of quiet, patient, implicit obedience, 
the surrender of not only the selfish will and 



72 THE MOTHER OF JESUS AT CAN A ; OR, 

power, but of the private judgment also, to the 
Lord. For in her conduct we see no petulant 
asking of a miracle, but the mere confession 
of a want ; we see no complaining that the 
Divine assistance is delayed, but simply the 
careful preparation, that everything may be 
in order and readiness when it shall be the 
Lord's good pleasure to act, and that every 
intention on the Lord's part shall meet with 
ready and cheerful obedience in those who 
served Him. Obedience and humility! How 
do these lowly but heavenly virtues shine forth 
in the conduct of the mother of Jesus as here 
portrayed ! 

Let us dwell for a moment on that answer 
which the Lord made to her, and the part 
which she took on hearing it. When she says 
they have no wine, the Lord replies, "Woman, 
what have I to do with thee ? mine hour is not 
yet come." These are strange and seemingly 
harsh words. He does not even call her 
" mother," but u woman" ! Why is such an 



HUMILITY AND OBEDIENCE. 73 

answer given to her simple remark that they 
have no wine ? Now, we well know that ab- 
rupt and harsh as these, our Saviour's, words 
may sound to the ear, they do yet imply 
nothing of like nature in Him who spoke 
them. His own infinite love and more than 
human wisdom prompted these words. Like 
the similar words spoken to Mary and Joseph 
when they found Him in the Temple discours- 
ing with the Doctors, " How is it that ye sought 
me ?" these must also be regarded as the ut- 
terances of the Divine Truth in its own char- 
acter ; as elevated out of the plane of merely 
local and personal relations and considerations. 
These words, " Woman, what have I to do with 
thee? mine hour is not yet come/' cannot, 
therefore, be understood at all when viewed 
in their merely literal or natural sense. We 
must penetrate into the region of pure spirit- 
ual truth if we would arrive at their real 
meaning. Thus, the Saviour calls her not 
mother, for He is speaking in his Divine char- 
d 7 



74 THE MOTHER OE JESUS AT CANA ; OR, 

acter, in that Divine Humanity which owed 
nothing to her, but was wholly the Son of 
God. He calls her "woman/' because He 
addresses her as the type of all affection for 
what is good and holy ; but He says to her, 
" What have I to do with thee ? mine hour is 
not yet come," — meaning that that spiritual 
wine, which is the interior truth of genuine 
religious faith, cannot be given by Him, imme- 
diately, even to those of good and pious affec- 
tions, but only in the degree that they put 
away their evils, according to the truths of ex- 
ternal righteousness which they already pos- 
sess. " His hour is not yet come," because 
the six water-pots of stone set for the purifi- 
cation of the Jews are not yet filled with water. 
The outer man is not yet purified : the desire 
for a good life has not yet put to use all those 
plain, practical precepts of external religion 
which even the Gentiles of Galilee do in some 
form possess. In no other wise could the re- 
quest for wine be answered. Spiritual truth 



HUMILITY AND OBEDIENCE. 75 

could not be given except through natural 
external truth already known and put to use. 
The wine could not be created immediately, 
but the water must first be brought and the 
vessels filled, and then the wine would not be 
wanting. To be patient, to rely on the Lord, to 
wait his good time, — -this is the practical teach- 
ing of the words addressed to Mary. And 
what does she do ? She saith to the servants, 
" Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it," — that 
is, she places all her powers at his command, 
and, for the time, seeks no other means of 
supplying her needs but simply to obey. She 
asks no further question, — it is sufficient to 
know that the hour is not yet come, and she 
sets herself about the plain duty of the present 
to patiently obey what He shall command, and 
to await his holy pleasure. 

With this view of her conduct before our 
eyes, we shall surely now the better perceive 
the deep significance of these few words at the 
beginning of the narrative, "And the mother 



76 THE MOTHER OF JESUS AT CANA ; OR, 

of Jesus was there/' For the holy example 
of her behavior and its many goodly lessons 
form an essential part of the Divine instruction 
afforded by the miracle throughout. As re- 
marked above, it is not all to know simply 
that water was changed to wine ; we must 
know, as well, where the miracle was performed, 
and in whose presence. So now we see that 
interior and spiritual religion, signified by the 
wine, cannot be given to us all immediately, 
nor without regard to the present condition of 
our hearts and lives. We see that this Divine 
work — the redemption of man, his regenera- 
tion out of natural into spiritual life — must be 
wrought in that state of his mind typified by 
the marriage-feast at Cana of Galilee, and that 
essential to this w T ork is the presence of those 
holy qualities here represented by the " mother 
of Jesus. " 

But where is the spiritual Galilee of the 
Gentiles ? It is, as said above, wherever in the 
wide world there is a mind whose thoughts and 



HUMILITY AND OBEDIENCE. 77 

whose affections are mainly set upon natural 
and worldly objects. It is not the abode of 
the wicked and irreligious exclusively, but 
rather of all who have not risen out of the 
obscurities and the delusions of the natural 
and earthly life into the true and everlasting 
light of spiritual knowledge and religious faith. 
Now, the marriage at Cana of Galilee is the 
sealing of a sacred covenant between the souls 
of men in this state and their Creator. It is 
establishing the Church as the kingdom of the 
Lord in the hearts of these as yet natural- 
minded men. It matters not whether it be in 
heathen, in Christian, or in Jewish lands, the 
real Galilee is everywhere the same region of 
spiritual darkness, — the state of the unregen- 
erate man. It is here that the first miracle must 
be wrought, that the first step must be taken 
in the religious life. It is idle to think that 
only in some lofty realm of spiritual illumina- 
tion and enthusiasm man can set. out on the 
path that will lead up to heaven. There is no 

7* 



THE MOTHER OF JESUS AT CANA; OR, 

other place to start from than the actual situa- 
tion we are in ! The sick man does not wait 
until he is whole and then send for his physi- 
cian. It is the People that sat in darkness that 
have seen a great light, and they that sat in the 
valley of the shadow of death, upon them hath 
the light shiiicd. And the Church, or the Lord's 
marriage-covenant, finds its initiament not 
necessarily in their knowledge of true doctrine 
or their perception of spiritual and Divine 
things in their true character, but rather in 
their willingness to live according to the prin- 
ciples of their religion, whatever it be, and to 
put to practice whatever they take to be the 
truth. In a word, it rests primarily on the 
affection of good. In this sense the Jews were 
themselves Gentiles when viewed in relation 
to Christianity; for, though they had no knowl- 
edge of a spiritual church or religion, still, they 
held in reverence the letter of the law 7 , and 
many of them obeyed it from religious motives. 
So is the Gentile, or Galilean Church at this 



HUMILITY AND OBEDIENCE. 79 

day established with all who, in whatever 
Christian sect, even though their minds are 
still darkened with falses of doctrine, do yet 
reverence a Divine Being and from religious 
motives strive to live according to their faith. 
And in this Galilean Church there is to be 
done the Divine work of giving light for dark- 
ness, a true religious faith and love, with all 
their substantial and enduring joys, for the 
outer shell of ceremonious observance, of self- 
imposed discipline, of a rigid and often irk- 
some obedience to the external rules of piety 
and morality. And how shall this work be 
done ? What is to elevate this great multi- 
tude of souls, hardly capable of an intelligent 
thought about God, heaven, hell, the spiritual 
world, the influence of these upon man's soul ; 
who know still less about the interior struc- 
ture of their own being, of the way in which 
evil habits grow and become strong, or of that 
in which they can be cast off and good ones 
implanted in their stead; who perceive nothing 



8o THE MOTHER OF JESUS AT CANA ; OR, 

of the connection of one evil with another, and 
know not the consequence of sinful acts apart 
from the temporal punishment which they 
incur at men's, hands ? — what shall elevate 
these souls into the light of true religion and 
a reasonable faith ? What shall teach them a 
knowledge of themselves and reveal to them 
the glory of their Lord ? How shall they ever 
make known their wants to God, knowing 
them not themselves ? Who shall say to the 
Lord, " They have no wine," and in patience, 
self-possession, and heavenly trust dispose 
all things so that they may best accom- 
plish the Lord's bidding? Surely here is the 
needful office of that humility and obedience 
which is so clearly typified by the mother of 
Jesus at the marriage in Cana. The desire to 
live a good life, accompanied with a habit of 
obedience and humility, a readiness to do what 
our religion requires, and to leave our future 
states and their needs in the hands of Provi- 
dence, — such is a sure road of progress in the 



HUMILITY AND OBEDIENCE. 8 I 

life of true religion. No one even in Gentile 
darkness is without sufficient light to guide 
him at least one step forward. There are the 
Ten Commandments, the true law of holiness, 
which the most external and natural mind can 
at least in outward conduct obey ; there is the 
Church with her holy instructions, her Divine 
ordinances, the very avenues of heavenly grace 
and light into the souls of men ; there are the 
outward forms of worship, of piety, of charity, 
of self-discipline ; — all these, the externals of 
religion, are within reach of the most natural- 
minded, the most spiritually-ignorant of men. 
And now if there be the true desire to lead 
a holy life, a genuine affection for what is good, 
and a willingness to shun the evils of the 
natural and selfish life as they appear, let the 
example of Mary, the mother of Jesus, be not 
forgotten. Rest content with the obedient 
pursuance of these plain, practical, external 
duties, and neither murmur nor rebel if the 
Lord's time is long in coming! See that in 



82 THE MOTHER OF JESUS AT CANA ; OR, 

this low, natural plane of our life, where all our 
religion must make its beginning, we have 
really put everything in orderly subjection to 
the Lord ! Have we practically learned to 
trust in the Lord as our heavenly Father, to 
reverence Him in our conversation, to pray to 
Him in words, to kneel down before Him ? 
Have we accepted his Holy Word as our 
spiritual counsel and guide ? Have we dis- 
ciplined oyr unruly and rebellious natural will 
into the habit of a regular and pious observ- 
ance of the holy services of the Church ? Have 
we grown yet to that measure of Christian 
courage that we dare in word, gesture, and 
act to confess Christ before men ? 

Then have we followed that good example. 
The^servants are ready to do the Lord's will ; 
the stone vessels set for our purification, these 
acts of external obedience, are filled to the 
brim ; and the water is ready to be made wine. 

But how many are ready to call that an idle 
and vain show of religion -which consists in 



HUMILITY AND OBEDIENCE. 83 

outward, self-compelled obedience rather than 
in the voluntary and spontaneous expression 
of the heart's desire ! How many are too 
willing to regard with a kind of contempt a 
pious and reverential behavior toward the 
things of the Church, saying that righteous- 
ness and piety must be cultivated rather in 
the heart than in outward gesture, and that 
these external acts are but a poor substitute 
for a truly reformed and spiritual life ! But is 
not this like complaining that the Saviour does 
not furnish wine at once, instead of ordering 
water to be brought and the six stone vessels 
filled to the brim ? Not so did the mother of 
Jesus ; but turned rather to the servants and 
said, " Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it." 
It is true, indeed, that the externals of re- 
ligion, morality, piety, and good works, are 
far different from that substantial, heaven- 
descended life of the soul, — true faith and true 
charity. But they are different only as lower 
and higher planes of the same life of holi- 



84 THE MOTHER OF JESUS AT CANA ; OR, 

ness. Nor are the former cast aside as vain 
and worthless by those who have arrived at 
a more interior and spiritual enjoyment of 
religion. On the contrary, they are filled 
through and through with all the zeal and 
earnestness of the souPs new life. For we 
do not read that the water with which these 
six vessels were filled was ever poured out, 
as no longer of use. That very water was 
itself made wine, and out of these same ves- 
sels was the precious draught made and borne 
to the governor of the feast ! 

So may it be with all who are not ashamed 
to openly acknowledge the Lord before man, 
to worship Him with the lips, and to make his 
Holy Word the rule of their conversation in 
the world ; who, while they make no preten- 
sion to great spirituality of mind nor clamor 
contentiously for the wine of spiritual truth, 
do yet, with humility and sincerity, strive to 
bring their natural and carnal man into some 
degree of orderly subjection to the holy stat- 



HUMILITY AND OBEDIENCE. 85 

utes and commandments of the Lord. And 
when we have faithfully and obediently done 
our part, the Lord in his own hour will do his. 
He will reward our obedience with those holy 
affections whose delight is in the law of the 
Lord ; He will make our religion no longer 
self-imposed restraint, but a willing marriage- 
covenant between our souls and heaven ; and 
will call us, admitted into the freedom of a 
genuine spiritual faith, no longer servants, but 
friends. 



©hat tlmt whkh te mxst; m* t j&piritual Qtmtonmgfr 



Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine ; and 
when men have well drimk, the it that which is worse : 
but thou hast kept the good wine until now. — St. John ii. 10. 



T3UT afterward, that which is worse!" 
JD Stern law of retribution for every indul- 
gence which, beginning in what is innocent and 
good, because allied to a good and healthful 
purpose, more and more leads to the indul- 
gence for its own sake, and so, perverted from 
its rightful end, becomes itself an evil, fitting 
a man ever more and more for, afterward, 
that which is worse ! 

The holy use and significance of wine as the 
symbol of the Divine Truth derived from our 
Lord's Divine Good, consequently, as the in- 
terior spiritual truth which nourishes the life 
86 



THEN THAT WHICH IS WORSE. 87 

of the Church, this is the main subject of the 
miracle at Cana. But the misuse or the per- 
version of wine, — the abuse and profanation of 
God's precious gifts to man, — whether physical 
or spiritual, are also pointed out in the above 
words. 

" When men have well drunk, then that which 
is worse." The governor of that marriage- 
feast in Galilee, when he has tasted the water 
that by the Divine miracle was made wine, 
calls the bridegroom to him, as if supposing 
that the wine was of his furnishing, and courte- 
ously praises him for its excellent quality, 
saying, " Every man at the beginning doth set 
forth good wine ; and when men have well 
drunk, then that which is worse : but thou hast 
kept the good wine until now." 

It would seem that the marriage-supper was 
at an end, the feasting and rejoicing coming to 
its close, and that the " good wine" was offered 
as a more choice and excellent viand where- 
with to crown the feast. Such, indeed, is it to 



88 THEN THAT WHICH IS WORSE; OR, 

all who shall come to that marriage-supper of 
the Lamb, — that spiritual communion with the 
Lord which constitutes the blessedness of the 
regenerate life. 

After the supper, the cup ; after the mar- 
riage, the offering of the good wine, — made 
so by the Lord's own Divine gift and opera- 
tion, but through our humble obedience and 
our co-operation as the only means. For the 
water, which must first be brought, is the 
natural truth, which appeals and applies to 
our natural outward life and its duties here, 
where we must begin our reformation. The 
wine is the same external truth and external 
religion turned by the inflowing of God's Holy 
Spirit into interior and spiritual truth, in the 
degree that we have applied our knowledge 
of truth to the good of life, and thus filled all 
the holy vessels set for our purification with our 
obedience in shunning evil as sin. And this ap- 
plying our knowledge of truth to the good of 
life ; this uniting of our faith with charity, — this 



SPIRITUAL DRUNKENNESS. 89 

is the heavenly marriage which takes place in 
the soul of the regenerate, and which makes 
man, born on earth into hereditary evil and 
suffering, to be like unto the angels and the 
children of the resurrection. For him the good 
wine is kept till the last. 

When we say this takes place in the religious 
life of a man, we mean that it is what takes 
place in the Church. For the Church is in 
man. It consists of whatever union there is, 
in a man, of the faith of his understanding, 
with the good affections of his will. And so 
to crown this heavenly union of the two great 
principles which make up all spiritual, heav- 
enly life, — at which blessed union the Lord, 
our Saviour and Regenerator, Jesus Christ, is 
always spiritually present, — the cup of wine is 
offered at the last. For this is the appropri- 
ation from the Lord Himself, the heavenly 
Bridegroom, of the fullness of all spiritual nour- 
ishment and benediction, — the water turned to 
wine, — the "good wine," " kept until now" ! 

8* 



90 THEN THA T WHICH IS WORSE; OR, 

Different is it with those who receive the 
gifts of God only to pervert, misuse, and pro- 
fane them, and this whether it be in natural 
goods or in spiritual goods. The wine which 
is here mentioned has chiefly a reference to 
truth, conjoined to the good of life ; but the 
principle holds true of any endowment of our 
nature whereby our Creator has made us ca- 
pable of attaining to an immortal and angelic 
life. All natural gifts, or faculties and propen- 
sities, were, as they came from our Creator's 
designing hand, good, orderly, and healthful, 
Behold, He looked upon everything that He 
had made, and it was very good ! So is there 
nothing belonging to our natural life which 
was not, in the purpose of its Divine Maker, 
good, holy, pure, and healthful. So at the be- 
ginning did our heavenly Father set forth that 
which was good for us to use and enjoy. 
Every appetite of the body, every organ and 
every sense, and so likewise every emotion 
and passion of the will, every thought, desire, 



SPIRITUAL DRUNKENNESS. 9 1 

and impulse of the mind, every longing after 
intellectual exercise and acquisition, — all these 
were adapted to the precious and delightful 
good to which they were intended to minister. 
Now, when any of these natural appetites, 
passions, or faculties, whether bodily or men- 
tal, is separated from its original and divinely- 
appointed use, and is indulged for its own sake, 
without regard to its proper use, there begins 
that which is akin to drunkenness, and the per- 
son so doing begins his miserable downward 
way of preparing himself ever more and more 
for "afterwards that which is worse" : "When 
men have drunken, then that which is worse. " 
Yes, this is the fearful and wretched result of 
every indulgence of natural appetite or desire 
or taste or passion without a view to some 
worthy use and benefit. Drunkenness itself 
illustrates most forcibly the rule. It is not the 
drinking or the eating of this or that that con- 
demns a man. But when a man cultivates a 
taste for intoxicating drinks from merely a 



92 THEN THAT WHICH IS WORSE; OR, 

bodily appetite, and goes on, subjecting his 
mind, and his body itself, at length, to the wild 
control of this single lust, then, when he drinks, 
it is to no use, either bodily or mental, but solely 
to the abuse and the degradation of his whole 
nature. The appetite, separated from its own 
orderly purpose, becomes itself the avenue of 
a thousand evils. Disease of mind and body, 
and misery to himself and others about him, 
follow on to make up "that which is worse," — 
the sequel to his having ceased to be contented 
with the "good wine set forth at the first." 
The great law of use is that which determines 
all right or wrong indulgence ; and use means 
the applying of everything, in bodily appetites 
or mental tastes and faculties, to its ozvn good ; 
and that alone is its good which makes this ap- 
petite or faculty serve the soul in its high and 
immortal purposes. The question with every 
man should be, For what are the appetites 
which I indulge, or the habits of the life I lead, 
preparing me ? For that which is better, or 



SPIRITUAL DRUNKENNESS. 93 

that which is worse ? There comes for all of 
us a great afterwards, — a long " hereafter ;" 
and for this, whether we know it or think of it 
or not, we are preparing in every minutia of 
our daily life and habits. Oh, miserable " after- 
wards" to those who have used this life only 
to become " well drunken," to pamper and 
feed the body and put into the rein of its lusts 
the whole guiding and ruling of the life here ! 
Miserable hereafter to those who come into 
the future world with body and soul diseased, 
corrupted, spoiled for any healthy, orderly, 
angelic life, and fitted only, having offended in 
all their members, to have both body and soul 
cast into hell! 

There is a spiritual drunkenness as well as 
a physical ; and the one is like the other in 
its causes, and only w r orse in its consequences. 
The Bible speaks very frequently of this spir- 
itual drunkenness when describing the Church 
in its decline, as " drunk with the wine of for- 
nication," as being " drunken, but not with 



94 THEN THA T WHICH IS WORSE; OR, 

wine." This drunkenness is likewise an abuse 
of that which is first set forth to the soul as 
"good wine." The good wine is the truth 
which God gives us united to the good of life ; 
but when we separate truth from its good, 
then the heavenly marriage-bond is broken, 
and we drink the wine of fornication. Truth 
separated from good, in our first learning its Di- 
vine lessons, may lead us ever nearer to good, 
and become at length like water changed to 
wine when the marriage of faith and charity, or 
good and truth, takes place in the life we lead. 
But truth once conjoined to good and after- 
wards torn asunder from its holy spouse in 
the heart and used for the selfish purposes of 
human pride, glory, or gain, invariably turns 
and corrupts itself into falsity ; it becomes 
like soured and noxious and debasing drinks, 
— grateful only to a disordered appetite,— no 
longer serving, but only injuring, the soul that 
seeks it. 

When we thus speak of truth and good 



SPIRITUAL DRUNKENNESS. 95 

being separated in the Church in a man's soul, it 
seems like talking of abstractions ; but it is not 
so. Sad to-day is the spectacle of unhappy, 
diseased, shattered minds, which, not content 
with taking the holy truths of the Lord re- 
vealed to his Church in the Word, and espe- 
cially in the heavenly doctrines of the spiritual 
sense, as simply the means of living a life of 
real usefulness and holiness, have sought 
rather to investigate and reason about them 
from the plane of merely natural sense and 
science, and to build out of them some monu- 
ment which may glorify their own natural 
pride, or in some way distinguish themselves 
and gain for them the favor, the applause, and 
the rewards of men. God gave his Word and 
all his truth for the salvation of souls. This 
is its good, — its use. All trifling, speculating, 
theorizing, yea, all reasoning, about Divine 
truths, which does not look to this end, and in 
humility and worship labor to this good, is but 
being well drunken ; it is but perverting and 



96 THEN THAT WHICH IS WORSE; OR, 

abusing the good wine, so that men are made 
worse and not better for their acquaintance 
with the precious gifts of the Lord. 

Our reason may be likened to the thirst of 
the body. For we love to reason, to acquire 
a knowledge of things, and think over the 
knowledge and compare and analyze and dis- 
cuss and pass judgment. In many this reason- 
ing faculty becomes cultivated to a kind of 
passion ; and here is where the danger comes 
in of drinking overmuch, — of loving to reason 
for the mere sake of reasoning and disputing, 
and not at all with a view to a calm, peaceful 
security and confidence of soul, such as those 
alone enjoy whose " hearts are fixed, trusting in 
the Lord." For reason, like the bodily appetite, 
may be abused, in being indulged in from mere 
natural impulse or taste rather than with a 
view to a spiritual use, whether it be to the 
individual or to society. Reason that looks 
to the acquiring of Divine truth for the pur- 
pose of the soul's salvation, or to the uniting 



SPIRITUAL DRUNKENNESS. 97 

this truth with the life, first by driving out 
the evils it reveals and condemns, then by 
doing the good it teaches, all such reason 
is good and healthy. But it begins by look- 
ing- to the Lord in desire, if not in conscious 
act, for the light in which it shall exercise 
itself. In other words, this true and healthy 
reason begins by seeking truth, not inventing it. 
Far different is it with the reason that shuns 
all truth of Revelation because this implies a 
Divine government and authority to which 
obedience is a duty, and leaves no room for 
tampering and parleying. Such a reason is 
of the body and of the world only ; it feeds 
on the ideas which come to it through its bod- 
ily senses ; it never looks within ; the voice of 
the soul, the whisper of conscience, the mo- 
tives of God's Holy Spirit, the Holy Word of 
God, which encompassed with its great cloud 
of witnesses comes down from its celestial 
spheres to be a pillar of cloud and fire to lead 
us to heaven ; all this is signed away by this 



98 THEN THAT WHICH IS WORSE; OR, 

carnal, reasoning appetite, as belonging to re- 
ligion, the outward superstition of a puerile, 
by-gone age, while with busy fingers, out of 
the clay of earth, it moulds to itself its own 
sensual god, and then asks man's senses if 
it be not the better god to worship and the 
more rational and positive authority to obey. 
Such is the perverted use of the reason, and 
the corruption of the good wine of the Divine 
Truth revealed to us from our Father and 
King and Saviour in heaven. Such a sepa- 
ration of truth from the practical uses of the 
good life is what may be termed Spiritual 
Drunkenness. Those who use the truths of 
Revelation and of the Church only to magnify 
themselves, or to exalt themselves above the 
Divine Giver, these are the drunken ones who, 
no longer receptive of the good wine, become 
fit only for, afterwards, that which is worse. 

Note what Swedenborg says on this subject 
(Gen. ch. ix., verse 21), where he speaks of 
the Drunkenness of Noah : 



SPIRITUAL DRUNKENNESS. 99 

44 They are called drunkards, in die Word, 
who believe nothing but what they compre- 
hend, and for this purpose inquire into the 
mysteries of faith ; and because this is do'ne by 
means of sensual, or scientific, or philosophical 
things, according to the quality of the man, he 
cannot do otherwise than sink into errors. 
The thought of man is merely terrestrial, cor- 
poreal, and material, because it is from terres- 
trial, corporeal, and material things which are 
continually cleaving thereto, and in which the 
ideas of his thoughts are founded and termi- 
nated. Wherefore to think and reason from 
these things concerning things Divine is to 
bring oneself into errors and perversions, and 
it is as impossible for a man thence to obtain 
faith as for a camel to go through the eye 
of a needle ! The error and insanity which 
result from this practice are called in the 
Word drunkenness ; yea, souls or spirits in 
the other life who argue about the truths of 
faith, and against them even come to resemble 



IOO THEN THAT WHICH IS WORSE. 

drunkards and behave in like manner." — Ar- 
cana Coelestia, 1072. 

The Lord, the Father of us all, the Husband 
and Bridegroom of his Church, offers to us all. 
the good wine, — the Divine Truths of his own 
Divine good : He, for none else than He can 
offer it ; and in his own Word and Revealed 
Doctrine, for in the Word only, which was 
with God in the Beginning, and was and ever 
is God, is God made flesh to dwell among 
us ! In these holy and saving truths of our 
Divine Religion does the Lord and Saviour 
tender to men the cup of salvation, — the " good 
wine kept until now !" May our taking and 
drinking it be not to our condemnation ! 



"VI. 

She (BixAtA ^cxvmt; ox f the ^ubonUnatimt tsi the 



Gira thyself, and serve ??ie, till I have eaten and drunken. 
— St. Luke xvii. 8. 



IT is good for a man to be sometimes plainly 
spoken to. Whatever damage is incurred 
to delicate sensibility, to private opinion, to 
ease, convenience, and even the conventional 
forms of civility and kindness, the sacrifice is 
often more than counterbalanced by the rare 
service of plain speech. To such an extent 
has the art of feigning become the art of being 
courteous and polite, that mankind, not only 
in costume but in deportment as well, are 
clothed after one pattern, which as little cor- 
responds to the various individual characters 
hidden beneath as the gorgeous robes which 

9* ioi 



102 THE GIRDED SERVANT; OR, 

the stage-player wears at evening resemble 
the plain garb in which he eats his breakfast 
in the morning. 

The shell which thus hides and protects 
the actual internal qualities of men it is im- 
portant, sometimes, to break through. The 
external and artificial manner is an admirable 
railway, by which to make swift journeys over 
the ups and downs of a worldly career ; but he 
who would make true friends, learn the beau- 
ties and the defects of the wayside scene, and 
whose object is not so much to get to the 
journey's end as to gather up rich treasures 
along the route, he must take a slower con- 
veyance, and subject himself to accidents and 
delays. He must be willing. at times to drop 
his own mask, and he must demand it of his 
friends that they drop theirs. Plain speech is 
what does this needful work. 

If such be the case among men, how much 
more truly is it so with each man and his own 
soul! For the mannerism which prevails in 



THE SUBORDINATION OF THE SENSUAL. 1 03 

and fashions the intercourse of men in the world 
is hardly more affected, artificial, and decep- 
tive than that which we all wear in our own 
private estimation, — that is to say, which our 
external or natural man puts on in face of the 
internal man, and of Him who gives to the inter- 
nal man the spirit of judgment and understand- 
ing. For most men are as punctilious in their 
gentle courtesies toward themselves as toward 
their neighbor ; and many a person holds, it is 
to be feared, in much greater abhorrence a 
breach of etiquette between his inner and his 
outer man than any committed in social circles. 
The conscience is at best an intruder, and if 
always masked, will die for want of liberty and 
exercise ; and the body, in its easy, well-to-do 
repose, must take warning when no longer that 
inner voice speaks plain words and fearlessly. 
What a sad and dreary world would this be 
were the conventionalities of polite and fashion- 
able intercourse all that we could enjoy in 
friend and neighbor! So dreary, so miserable, 



104 THE GIRDED SERVANT; OR, 

is the life of him who wears ever before his 

m 

own conscience, his better, purer nature, the 
deceitful mask of a perverted, world-serving 
reason, and who, in his own eyes, arrays his 
actual vices and defects with the fair garments 
of innocence and beauty ! 

So is it a good thing for a man to be plainly 
spoken to, and for him to use plain words with 
himself. He corrects his mistakes more easily, 
sees more clearly his errors and short-comings, 
forms truer ideas, and knows better what to 
expect of the world around him, when he is 
not afraid to lay bare his own actual character 
before the searching eye of his conscience. 

Such plain words are those we have quoted 
above, "Gird thyself, and serve me, till I have 
eaten and drunken." They are words of 
authority and command, — the words of a 
master to his servant. 

" Which of you," saith our Lord, to his dis- 
ciples, " having a servant plowing or feeding 
cattle, will say unto him by and by, when he is 



THE SUBORDINATION OF THE SENSUAL. 105 

come from the field, Go and sit down to meat ? 
And will not rather say unto him, Make ready 
wherewith I may sup, and gird thyself, and 
serve me, till I have eaten and drunken ; and 
afterward thou shalt eat and drink? Doth he 
thank that servant because he did the things 
that were commanded him ? I trow not. So 
likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those 
things which are commanded you, say, We are 
unprofitable servants: we have done that which 
was our duty to do." 

Here is a plain picture of religious duty 
profitable for all to contemplate, but chiefly so 
for those who would relieve the life of religion 
in this world from all burdensome obligations 
and restraints, and who would really make it 
to be one with our easy and careless pursuit 
of the world's pleasures and goods, only wear- 
ing Sunday garments, and putting on sober and 
pious looks now and then, like as we see some 
persons affected at hearing solemn music. 
They cannot help being affected by it, but at 



106 THE GIRDED SERVANT; OR, 

the same time they have to admit that they do 
not like it. 

The language here represented as being 
used by the human master to his servant be- 
longs even more properly to the one Divine 
Master of us all. For that the relation between 
master and servant refers to that of the Lord 
and his disciples is evident from the following 
verse, where the disciples are taught to say, 
" We are unprofitable servants." It is the 
Lord, then, that addresses to us this stern and 
commanding language, "Gird thyself, and serve 
me, until I have eaten and drunken." But it 
is the Lord speaking through our interior and 
better nature, and addressing the lower carnal 
man with its various affections and thoughts. 
For the Lord is not a visible master whom we 
can wait upon with natural food and drink, but 
is rather the Holy Spirit, the Divine Truth 
dwelling within our hearts, and demanding our 
ready obedience and devoted service. It is, 
therefore, the spiritual man born of God, and 



THE SUBORDINATION OF THE SENSUAL. 107 

speaking with the wisdom and authority of 
God's Word of Truth, that thus commands the 
natural man to be girded and to serve. 

This servant — the natural or carnal man, as 
subordinate to the spiritual man, — that is, as 
subordinate to the Lord, for it is only from the 
Lord that the spiritual man has either power or 
authority — is represented in the parable as a 
plower of the field, or a feeder of cattle. That 
is what our natures are when viewed with ref- 
erence to interior qualities and operations. We 
are either plowers of the field or feeders of 
cattle or both at once. This is the natural 
constitution of our minds. The field which 
our Lord speaks of, we already know from his 
Word, is the world where his seed, the Divine 
Truth, is sown. The field is the mind of man, 
as destined to receive this seed. It is, there- 
fore, the intellect or understanding, for it is 
here that man receives the truth ; the plower 
of the field is he that cultivates this faculty of 
the mind, — that makes it ready for the recep- 



108 THE GIRDED SERVANT; OR, 

tion of the seed ; he who becomes learned and 
skilled in all sorts of intellectual pursuits, and 
thus capable of becoming truly wise when he 
shall have access to the Divine Word, the 
source of all Truth. And the feeder of cattle 
is evidently he who cultivates rather the affec- 
tions, in whose nature the emotional and vol- 
untary is more prominent than the intellectual 
part. For cattle, when referred to in the Holy 
Scriptures, are representatives of the natural 
affections. By the servant, therefore, who is 
a plowman, or a feeder of cattle, we have repre- 
sented to us the natural man, with his various 
mental possessions and capacities, both intel- 
lectual and voluntary. 

This servant is represented as coming in 
from the field, and these words bring a familiar 
picture before the mind's eye. We naturally 
think of the close of a long day of toil, and of 
the refreshing repast and grateful repose that 
evening promises. The plowman leaves his 
furrows, the herdsman drives his charge into 



THE SUBORDINATION OF THE SENSUAL. 1 09 

the fold for the night, and the faithful laborers 
come home to report to their master of their 
work, to receive his approval, and to prepare 
for another day's task. Now, this coming in 
from the field represents to us that state of a 
man's life when with diligence and zeal he has 
enriched his mind with many knowledges, and 
has developed within him many good natural 
affections; he has become, shall we say, learned, 
— a wise observer, a skillful reasoner, an able 
critic, a man of general and thorough mental 
culture? Or, on the other hand, he may have 
cultivated within him the most attractive and 
genial traits of heart ; he may be generous in 
will and deed, magnanimous, courageous, a 
man who can love deeply and truly, and who 
cannot fail to be loved by others. Such may 
that servant be who comes in from his day of 
faithful labor in the field. He is still altogether 
a natural — that is, an unregenerate — man. 
These fine mental traits and abilities are in- 
herited, or he has acquired them with great 

TO 



HO THE GIRDED SERVANT; OR, 

diligence for purely natural, that is, for selfish 
and worldly, ends. The servant coming from 
the field, — a noble and imposing sight ! So 
comes the youthful student from his success- 
fully-ended college course ; so comes the hero, 
laurel-crowned, from the long and bravely- 
fought campaign ; so comes the merchant, rich 
with the gains of many anxious years, and 
ready to enter upon a life of quiet and leisure; 
so comes every one, man and woman, of what- 
ever calling or standing, who, having completed 
some course of arduous discipline, labor, and 
general self- development, thinks to himself, 
now, in the pleasant evening-time, to reap the 
reward, to enjoy the sweet rest, to pursue 
during the remainder of life those pleasures 
and gratifications which all these rare and la- 
boriously-acquired faculties seem to promise. 
The mind shall now delight in its learning ; all 
the wealth of the world of letters lies at its 
feet; it shall taste the rarest viands, and re- 
joice in its well-earned and proud estate. And 



THE SUBORDINA TION OF THE SENSUAL. 1 1 1 

the heart — has not this, too, learned the rare 
pleasure of loving and being loved ? Has it 
not, too, learned the art of making others 
happy by words or deeds of kindness, and 
learned, better still, the art of making itself 
happy by the exercise of those qualities which 
men love to reward with admiration and praise? 
So the servant comes in from the field. Wea- 
ried with his labors, he is ready to be waited 
on and tenderly treated. Thus, having acquired 
all these natural good gifts, the man without 
religion wants to be made happy in their en- 
joyment. He expects that, somehow, the 
world will make itself obliged to serve him ; 
that true and satisfying pleasure is now at his 
command ; that his own mental ability and his 
qualities of heart will insure him, in spite of 
any moral conditions or more interior and hid- 
den considerations, that lifelong feast of good 
things which he would have crown his labori- 
ous day with its calm, long-lingering hours of 
evening repose. 



112 THE GIRDED SERVANT; OR, 

But when the servant thus comes in from 
the field, what is the reception that awaits him ? 
" Will his master," saith our Lord, "say to him, 
Go and sit down to meat ? Will he not rather 
say to him, Make ready wherewith I may sup, 
and gird thyself, and serve me, until I have 
eaten and drunken : and afterward thou shalt 
eat and drink !" 

" Gird thyself, and serve me !" this is the 
plain speech of the master to the servant. So 
must our spiritual man address that lower na- 
ture, enriched by all the goods which earthly 
toil and culture can afford. It is a plain, hard 
word ; but he that does not use it is not longer 
a true master of himself; no longer represents 
in his spiritual part the Master in heaven, in 
whose name he should rule. It is hard to say 
to that mind and heart so richly endowed with 
natural gifts, — with fine talents, with great 
worldly knowledge, with noble and winning 
affections, — " Gird thyself, and serve me !" It 
is hard to place that proud and self-satisfied 



THE SUBORDINATION OF THE SENSUAL. 1 1 3 

outer man, which has come from the field with 
the sweat of toil and the laurel of this world's 
fame on the brow, in the rank of a servant, 
and make it do the bidding of the still, small 
voice within. 

" Gird thyself ; and serve me !" Is this, then, 
the reward of all this labor ? Is it for this that 
we have become learned ; that our intellects 
have become so proudly fashioned ; that our 
hearts are gifted with such admirable traits ; 
that we have arrived at that stage of mental 
and moral culture that we can challenge the 
world's esteem and love, — is it for this only 
that we must gird ourselves for new labor, and 
humbly serve that inner, spiritual man, and 
prize its secret, silent approbation more than all 
the plaudits and flattery of the admiring world ? 
Are we then, — with all our rare talents and 
lovable traits of character, — nothing after all 
but a plower of the field and a feeder of 
cattle ? With all that we can do in acquiring 
natural knowledge and cultivating the natural 

IO* 



114 THE GIRDED SERVANT; OR, 

affections, have we no real rest, no true de- 
light in store for us, until we have girded our- 
selves anew and serve with humility that stern 
and unrelenting master, — the spiritual man 
within us ? 

Such is indeed the case. With all that na- 
ture can do in enriching and beautifying mind 
and heart, thou art but a plower of the field 
and a feeder of cattle ! Such is the plain 
speech of the gospel. " Gird thyself, and serve 
me," must be the word of every true Christian 
to that external and carnal nature which he 
bears about with him and which the world has 
done so much to enrich and adorn. It is the 
command of religion to nature, of the spirit to 
the flesh, of God to his creatures, — " Gird thy- 
self, and serve me !" Do not think to sit down 
and eat of thy natural earnings while yet the 
spirit within remains unfed. Presume not to 
count on the true enjoyment of any natural 
gift or w r orldly treasure until first it has been 
consecrated to the service of God ; until first 



THE SUBORDIXA TION OF THE SENSUAL. I I 5 

it has been applied in some way to the nourish- 
ment of the soul's higher life within ; until it 
has first served the spiritual man as its mas- 
ter. It is for this higher life, this truer and 
more lasting enjoyment, that all these out- 
ward gifts and capacities are given to man. 
"Thou madest him/' saith the Psalmist, " to have 
dominion over the works of thy hands ; thou 
hast put all things tinder his feet ; all sheep 
and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field, the 
fowl of the air, the fish of the sea, and what- 
soever passeth through the paths of the seas!'' 
Not only is all nature made to serve man's 
bodily wants and pleasure, but even this body, 
and all its capacities for delights and for noble 
and beautiful deeds, was made and given to 
serve the soul. In the soul, in the spiritual 
man, the Lord Himself makes his dwelling- 
place, and there by his Holy Spirit rules, the 
one blessed Master and King of all worlds. 
It is his voice that says to this whole wide and 
glorious realm of nature, " Gird thyself, and 



Il6 THE GIRDED SERVANT; OR, 

serve me !" It is the voice of his Divine 
Word speaking in our consciences that quells 
the proud pretensions and hopes of the flesh 
with the stern command, " Gird thyself, and 
serve me !" 

And what is it for the carnal or natural man 
to gird himself and serve the spirit ? It is to 
compel himself to obey the laws of holy and 
righteous living. It is to put the strong girdle 
of true principles, of firm resolution, and un- 
yielding discipline about all the unruly and 
loose-going thoughts, desires, and purposes of 
the heart. It is to bring the flesh into subor- 
dination to the spirit, and to make every natural 
gift and acquirement subservient to a religious, 
that is, a charitable, useful, and holy life. 
Until this is done there is no true rest, no real 
enjoyment of all this world's goods ; until the 
lower nature is first brought into order and 
subjection to the spirit within ; until its every 
faculty and possession has been offered as a 
holy sacrifice upon God's table, and the purpose 



THE SUBORDINA TION OF THE SENSUAL. 1 17 

of life has been made first of all to serve Him, 
as the true and lawful Master, and to give Him 
the merit and praise for all that we may ac- 
quire or achieve of goodness and wisdom; until 
this is done, we need hope for no evening rest 
in the peaceful household where God's true 
servants dwell ; we need count on no place at 
that blessed table where the Lord feeds, with 
the bread of heaven, those that hunger after 
righteousness. We may return to our furrows 
and our herds unrefreshed, while those ser- 
vants who were willing first to serve their 
Master, afterwards sit down themselves and 
enjoy, in heavenly contentment, their eternal 
reward. 

There seems to be in our day no more 
favorite theme with popular writers than the 
excellence of nature and of man's natural gifts. 
Upon these are lavished a thousand terms of 
delight and admiration, while the interior and 
invisible world of the spirit, — that is, of those 
holy and Divine things which inhabit a plane 



I IS THE GIRDED SERVANT; OR, 

wholly above and distinct from that of all 
natural thought and feeling, — -this spiritual part 
of man is treated with indifference, and often 
with an ill-concealed contempt. The servant 
has become indeed higher than his lord. It is 
an offense to polite ears to hint that the man 
whom all the world admires for his great learn- 
ing and splendid intellectual talents, when he 
hath said in his heart, " There is no God," is a 
fool ! It seems rude to gentle natures to de- 
clare that the large-hearted, generous, easy- 
going man who has so many friends, so few 
cares, who makes light of occasional vices, and 
jests about religion, and yet is so kind, so 
gentle, so courteous, so popular, in a word, to 
say that he is spiritually but a feeder of cattle, 
that his whole life is devoted to purely selfish 
and sensual pursuits; yea, that he is, to use 
the Psalmist's phrase, " But as a beast before 
God !" 

Let, then, him who has the courage to pro- 
fess before the world the name of Christian, 



THE SUBORDINATION OF THE SENSUAL. 1 1 9 

that he is a follower, a servant, a soldier of 
Christ the Lord ; let him also have courage to 
say to his proud and merely natural man, 
" Gird thyself, and serve me." Let him regard 
with just disdain those courtiers of the flesh, 
those flatterers of nature's unsanctified gifts, 
those lauders of human greatness and virtue. 
Let him, in the consciousness of the true worth 
and dignity of his spiritual man, repel the ad- 
vances of this lower nature, puffed up by the 
world's flatteries, with the significant word, 
" After me !" 

And let him recognize his own spiritual mas- 
tery as only the stewardship to a higher Lord, 
even Christ, that as he orders the flesh into 
subservience to the spirit, so may he in both 
spirit and flesh serve God faithfully, and be 
admitted at length to that blessed feast at 
which all the servants of God shall sit down in 
the kingdom of heaven. 



VII. 
WU llittift xtgtmA to ^igltt; ox t tfte t&xwt (ttfaxxiwttx 



One thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see. 
St. John ix. 25. 



EVERY revelation of spiritual truth is a 
new light sent into the world from Him 
who in heaven shines as a Sun before the eyes 
of the angels. 

The Truth, verily, shines in our minds ; it is 
our sunlight there ; and ignorance and denial 
of the Truth is dimness and darkness in the 
soul. Now, as a man cannot see when in 
utter darkness, so is a man mentally blind 
when in ignorance, or in a state of denying 
the Truth, since then no spiritual light, which is 
Truth, enters into the understanding, the un- 
derstanding being to the mind what the eye is 
to the body. 



120 



THE BLIND RESTORED TO SIGHT. 121 

We see, therefore, what is meant by our 
Lord's miraculous curing of the blind. That 
the external cures are a parable or symbol of 
what our Saviour was at the same time and is 
ever doing for us inwardly, by the influence 
of his Holy Spirit and his Word, need o'nly be 
stated to be clearly seen. Every one under- 
stands that by the blind are meant not only 
those who cannot see the things of nature 
around them, but also those who cannot see 
other things as real and substantial. They 
who cannot see that there is a God ; that He 
is our Lord Jesus Christ; that his Holy Word 
is inspired throughout, being full of heavenly 
meaning and Divine power ; that the Church 
is holy, and to be loved and revered; that to 
do right is better than to do wrong ; that to 
lose our selfish, unholy life is really to gain the 
life everlasting; that the real man is not the 
fleshly body, but the soul and its spiritual 
body, which lives in these earthly bodies now, 
but which will one day cast aside this earthly 

F II 



122 THE BLIND RESTORED TO SIGHT; OR, 

body and live thenceforth in the spiritual 
world in its own immortal strength and sub- 
stance ; that the spiritual world is as real as 
this, and is unseen by us only so long as we 
are clothed with a body of earthly matter; that 
the spiritual world is inhabited forever by those 
who have left this world, some of whom are 
happy in heaven, others of whom are unhappy 
in hell ; they who cannot see these and similar 
things, who do not understand them, are those 
who, in the Scriptures, are called blind. These 
facts are all plainly visible to the mind of a 
believing man, and yet invisible to him who is 
mentally blind, — that is, to whom the light of 
these revealed truths has never come, or who, 
if the light has come, has rejected it. 

It matters not when and where our blessed 
Lord and Light once performed the outward 
miracle of restoring sight to the blind ; we 
know that He did it, and we know that He de- 
sired that men should in all times believe Him 
to be able to do it, and should look to Him 



CHAR A CTER OF CHRISTIAN E VIDENCE. 1 2 3 

alone as the giver of sight and of all natural 
and spiritual blessings. He could at this day 
cure the eyes of all the blind, and He would 
do it, we may be assured, if, in his all-seeing 
Providence and Wisdom, men would thereby 
be permanently the better off. But the Lord 
has permitted physical blindness for some mer- 
ciful end, and with many, nay, with all, we may 
safely say the end is that they may be able 
better to see spiritual things and be filled with 
greater spiritual light. And this is undoubt- 
edly the greater blessing of the two. For, 
pleasant as it is and desirable to all to see the 
things of this world, the faces of friends, the 
beautiful scenes of nature and the way to pur- 
sue our natural industry, still, this sight lasts 
but a few years at most, and then all natural 
vision fades from the eye and the body lies 
cold and useless in the grave. And suppose, 
now, the soul of him who has enjoyed his nat- 
ural eyesight in this world, and has seen all the 
beautiful things this world can display, goes 



124 THE BLIND RESTORED TO SIGHT; OR, 

forth in his spiritual body into the eternal 
world beyond the grave, and there finds that 
he is blind ; that the fair scenes of heaven, of 
angelic society, the beautiful Paradise of which 
he had often read, that these are all darkness 
to him, that his eyes are forever closed to that 
which those blessed spirits see who have in this 
world been careful, while they had the light of 
Divine Truth, to walk in it, lest darkness should 
come upon them ! It surely were better to be 
physically blind for a few years here, if this shall 
in any way secure to us the bright and endless 
vision of the immortal world ; and, since the 
providence of God looks always to eternal ends, 
physical blindness must, in this providence, be 
permitted with a view to the eternal good and 
happiness of him who is thus afflicted. 

The same rule holds good in regard to all 
other bodily diseases which our Lord, although 
He might miraculously cure them this day if 
He would, still permits us to bear for the sake 
of the inward cure and final immortal health 



CHARACTER OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE. 1 25 

of our souls. For He is ever spiritually heal- 
ing our sicknesses and illuminating our blind- 
ness ; and this by every possible means, since 
by making whole in his own truth and love 
He makes us to be angels, and to be capable 
of enjoying to eternity the happiness of heaven. 
This is what He would have us all enjoy ; for 
this He would cure now in every one of us all 
sorts of blindness and sickness and infirmity 
of soul, and He will do this for us if we do not 
oppose ourselves to his Divine and most mer- 
ciful efforts. 

There are two kinds of spiritual blindness, 
just as there are two kinds of physical blind- 
ness. There are some men spiritually blind 
from their birth, and others who have been 
made blind. Now, those who are blind from 
their birth — and it is this class that is repre- 
sented by him whom the Lord healed — are 
those who are blind from ignorance of spiritual 
truth. They have never learned about spirit- 
ual things and the spiritual life, and are there- 

11* 



126 THE BLIND RESTORED TO SIGHT; OR, 

fore blind. Their blindness is not the result 
of any actual sin of their own, but of their 
birth and circumstances in the world. But it is 
otherwise with those who have once seen the 
light of Truth, and afterward, by closing their 
minds to it, by denying or violating the Truth 
in their conduct, have actually made them- 
selves blind. These are not only blind but 
guilty at the same time. Their blindness is 
the result of their evil living and evil dbing. 
It is a true adage that "none are so blind as 
those who will not see," and with all of us very 
much at all times depends on our own will as 
to whether we will see certain things presented 
to our minds or not. Even many honest 
doubters, so called, are, probably, at the best, 
but indifferent doers of the Word of God ; 
and we have Divine authority for believing 
that even in obtaining spiritual sight, — which is 
a faith in the things of revealed religion, — 
where there is a will there is a way ; and 
what this way is our Lord shows us when He 



CHARACTER OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE. I 27 

says, To him that knocketh it shall be opened ; 
He that asketh shall receive : yea, he that 
doeth the works shall know of the doctrine 
whether it be true. And to the man that was 
born blind and came to have his sight given 
him, the Lord, having first anointed his eyes 
with clay, said, Go wash in the pool of Siloam. 
And the spiritual meaning of this process 
of restoring sight is this : " The clay made of 
spittle on the ground" is reformation of life by 
truth learned in the literal sense of the Word. 
The ground is the Church where the Word of 
God is taught. The clay is the willing heart, 
ready to be formed by the influence of the Holy 
Spirit; and the clay applied to the eye is the 
understanding illumined by the Truth of the 
Divine Word when man is in this willing and 
affirmative state. And when one has thus 
learned and applied to his life's conduct these 
plain Divine truths then he is being spiritually 
washed in the pool of Siloam, for this pool 
signifies also the precepts of the literal Scrip- 



128 THE BLIND RESTORED TO SIGHT; OR, 

tures, and to be washed in it means to be 
cleansed from evils and falsities. 

The process of giving sight to the blind, 
when described in the symbolic language of 
this miracle, seems a brief and very extraor- 
dinary one. And yet it is the same process 
that is quietly and invisibly going on now, day 
after day, week after week, year after year, in 
the minds of innumerable men and women on 
this earth. For we are all blind from our 
birth as to all the things relating to the spiritual 
world and the spiritual life, and only from the 
Word and its doctrines taught us in the Chris- 
tian Church do we derive that which gives light 
to our understanding and enables us to see 
anything beyond the natural life. Without 
the Revealed Word we should know nothing 
of God, of heaven and hell, — there would 
be no church and no religiefh. Without the 
Word of God we would have no pool wherein 
to wash our souls from the impurities of evil 
affections and of false and blinding thoughts. 



CHARACTER OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE. 1 29 

But as a man grows up under the influences 
of Christian education and makes progress in 
a truly religious life, he finds that his spiritual 
sight is wonderfully opened. What once 
seemed to him dark and mysterious now 
stands out clear and well defined in the liijht 
of Truth. Spiritual things put on a form more 
and more real and tangible; the spiritual world 
becomes a real world to look forward to ; spir- 
itual motives become strong enough to assert 
themselves over against what is merely natural 
and animal. He realizes that Religion is 
something more than a mere name and form ; 
that the life of the Church is more than 
mere ceremony or mere intellectual parti- 
sanship. In a word, the eye of the inner, the 
heavenly man, blind from its birth, is enabled 
to see ! 

Who has wrought this wondrous change, 
and how has it been wrought ? What answer 
can be given other than that of the man who 
was cured? that He that is called Jesus has 

F* 



130 THE BLIND RESTORED TO SIGHT; OR, 

anointed his eyes and said, Go wash in the pool 
of Siloam ; and that he went out and washed 
and received sight. In other words, what 
account can be given of this change in man 
from being merely natural and selfish to being 
in some degree regenerate, than that having 
learned in his earliest life that Jesus Christ is 
God, and that whatever He has commanded 
us in the Holy Bible is to be obeyed, and what- 
ever He has forbidden is to be shunned, this 
man has made this Divine Word the rule and 
standard by which to determine all questions 
of right and wrong, all things of faith and 
conscience? It is grown to be so habitual as 
hardly to be thought of as any self-imposed 
law or discipline. The instructions from the 
Word received at church and elsewhere form 
a part of his mental sustenance, and give 
continued renewal of spiritual purpose and 
strength. What is wrong is easily detected ; 
evils in his life become more and more dis- 
tinctly seen to be evils, and more and more 



CHARACTER OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE. 131 

hateful to his purer mind. The fallacies of 
natural sense and reason discover themselves 
one by one, and the whole old fabric of foolish 
doubts and vain questionings totters and falls 
before the strong, steady rays of the Divine 
Truth. 

Unseen and unfelt the hand of the Lord has 
passed over the eye of his soul, and left there 
the precious ointment. Unawares he has gone 
and washed in the pool of Siloam, and is come 
again, seeing. 

This is what the Christian religion is doing 
for all who are willing to pursue this plain, 
even way of faithfully doing so much of the 
Divine Truth as is revealed to their knowl- 
edge. Such is the power of the Word of God 
sincerely believed and faithfully practiced in 
our daily life. Its power is a secret, hidden 
one; behind the simple literal precept which 
we, in a trying moment, faithfully recall and 
endeavor to perform, we see not what angel- 
hosts are enrao-ed } n our behalf. But such is 



132 THE BLIND RESTORED TO SIGHT; OR, 

the communication between heaven and earth 
by means of the Word in its literal sense, that 
every effort on the part of man to obey this 
Word must be accompanied by spiritual power 
from above, which is in its origin none other 
than Divine, — a power which is not that of the 
whole heaven of angels only, but which is the 
power of Almighty God. 

And what is here especially to be observed 
is the secret manner in which this power works 
in us, curing our minds of their blindness, and 
so enabling us to see what we could not see 
before. 

We are taught that the Holy Spirit exerts 
its power in the inmost part of our souls. How 
it operates there is unknown to us; it is un- 
known to the angels ; it is known only to the 
Lord. We see its effects in the life of a regen- 
erate man ; the process itself is hidden from all 
human knowledge. Like the man before us, 
we can- tell what we have done on our part ; 
but how this has effected the result we know 



CHARACTER OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE. 133 

not. To the question, How opened He thine 
eyes? the man replied, That the Lord anointed 
him, and that he went to the pool and washed, 
and came seeing. He could not tell how clay 
from the ground put upon the eyes, and how 
washing in the pool, gave him sight, nor could 
we explain it, nor can any human wisdom. 
And so it is with us. We know that our Lord 
Jesus Christ has given us his Word, and told 
us to obey it ; we know that in obeying this 
Holy Word of God we come to have a different 
mind from what we had before ; we come to 
see and believe spiritual things of which, be- 
fore, we were ignorant. How our external 
conduct, how our resisting of temptations, has 
brought this new heavenly light to our minds 
we cannot tell. We have in some degree 
cleansed our life of evil, and a new and better 
life has been born within us. We have gone, 
in obedience to the Divine command, to the 
great pool of Siloam, even the Word of God, 
and there have washed, and have come seeing! 

12 



134 THE BLIND RESTORED TO SIGHT; OR, 

This is all we know, and all the account we 
can give of the process. 

And this much we do know. We see men 
made better, made nobler and spiritually wiser 
by leading a religious life according to the 
commandments given in the Word of God. Let 
unbelievers, let all those who make other 
schemes for the world's enlightenment and re- 
formation, boast as they may ; let them deny 
God's Word and church and religion ; yea, let 
them slander it if they will; let them profane 
the holy name of our Lord ; let them call our 
Christian religion an idle superstition ; let them 
declare the Holy Bible to be a fiction and a 
fable ; we can only reply with the man whose 
sight was given him, " One thing I know, that, 
whereas I was blind, now I see !" 

The infinite wisdom of God is beyond our 
searching out. It is enough to know what it 
actually effects in our lives. The Christian life 
bears its own evidence, for him who has begun 
to live it, of its Divine Origin and Source. In 



CHARA CTER OF CHRISTIAN E VIBENCE. 1 3 5 

looking for the true God and Messiah, and for 
a saving religion, we need regard only the tes- 
timony to which our Lord referred John when 
he sent inquiries if it were He that should 
come, or should he look for another, namely, 
the testimony of that which we do see and 
hear, "The blind receive their sight." 

Let him who has faithfully tried to keep 
God's Word in his daily life ; to leave off evil 
practices; to shun all unkindness, injustice, im- 
purity, and lying, in his daily intercourse with 
his neighbor and in the secret thoughts and 
intentions of the heart ; who has been careful 
to think and speak of God and his Word and 
all Divine things reverently ; who has read the 
Bible in the intention of making it the rule of 
his life ; who has made it a point to keep holy 
the Sabbath-day, and to use every means at 
his command to spend it religiously, and in a 
way most profitable to his soul ; who has been 
willing in all things to sacrifice worldly for 
spiritual motives, and the things of the body 



136 THE BLIND RESTORED TO SIGHT. 

for the things of the spirit, — let such an one 
look back over the past years of his life, and 
see out of what darkness he has come ! Let 
him reflect on the many things that once 
seemed right and harmless, and that now re- 
veal the deadly poison that lay in them ! Let 
him compare his aims and his motives of life 
with those which once impelled him, — and he 
will know by his own living experience that 
whereas he was once blind, now he sees. And 
he will not long remain ignorant of the Power 
which has wrought this mysterious change in 
him. He will know it to be a Divine power, 
clothed in a Divine Word, and exerted through 
a true and Divine religion ; and in Jesus Christ, 
who is Himself the Word incarnate and the 
Head and Author of that religion, he will re- 
cognize with joy his true and only God and 
Lord, in whom dwelleth bodily all the fullness 
of the Deity, who is both God and Man, the 
first and the last, who is and who was and 
who is to come, the Almighty. 



(The Qttutn glome; or, fmlmduat $e£i>ott.$»bUH}) ftefore 



And every man went unto his own house, — St. John vii. 53. 



WHEN our Lord was on earth few people 
there were who knew Him and received 
Him in his true Divine character, as God man- 
ifest in the flesh and descended to earth for the 
salvation of the human race. 

There were frequent questionings and dis- 
putings about Him, his origin, his mission, and 
his teachings. Some thought Him to be a 
prophet sent of God ; some thought Him to 
be the Messiah, the Anointed One, come to 
deliver the people of God. Others disputed 
this, because they supposed that He had come 
from Galilee, and the Scriptures declare that 
the Messiah must come from Bethlehem ; not 

12* 137 



138 THE RETURN HOME; OR, 

knowing that in Bethlehem Jesus had indeed 
been born. And so " there was a division 
among the people because of Him, and some 
would have taken Him, but no man laid hands 
on Him." And on one occasion, when the 
chief priests were contending that Jesus, hav- 
ing come from Galilee, could be no true prophet, 
and ought to be given up to the law, while the 
officers, on the other hand, declared that the 
law could judge no man until it had at least 
heard him,- — the dispute being ended, we read 
that " every man went unto his own house." 

A little statement, seemingly very common- 
place and unimportant. Yes ! " And every 
man went unto his own house." 

Is not this true to-day of those who hear of 
the Lord Jesus, who witness the various opin- 
ions and doctrines held by man concerning 
Him ? who hear his own holy Words as they 
have come down to us in the gospel, and who 
must in their own minds decide whether they 
will henceforth be followers of the Lord Jesus, 



INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY. 1 39 

or join with those who persecute and deny Him ? 
" And every man went unto his own house." 

Neither then, nor now, does the Lord com- 
pel any man to believe in Him and worship 
Him. We are all in freedom as to what we 
will think and do concerning Him who was 
born in humility in our flesh to become the 
Saviour of the world. Once three disciples, 
Peter, James, and John, saw the Lord trans- 
figured in his Divine Glory ; they saw T Him as 
He appears in heaven ; as the angels there 
see Him; his face shining as the sun, his gar- 
ment white as the light. It was God, and not 
man they saw there, and they hid their faces 
before the splendor of that august and holy 
Presence ! But not so did these men see the 
Lord, who disputed about Him, and questioned 
-whether to follow Him or deliver Him up to 
the law. The Lord might have summoned 
about Him legions of angels to protect Him 
from their violence or to awe them with his 
Divine Majesty. But He had no interest in 



140 THE RETURN HOME; OR, 

having men to follow Him and worship Him 
as Divine, except as they did so willingly, from 
the heart. Gladly, indeed, would He have men 
give up all and follow Him ; but they could 
only of their own will give up their selfish 
lusts, their earthly idols. The Lord would not 
take anything from them by violence. The 
Lord would have a man to compel himself; 
the Lord does not compel. And to compel 
one's self is an act of the highest freedom. It 
is an act of the will ; it is a deciding which we 
will follow and obey, the Lord or the devil. 

This is a decision which no one else makes 
for us ; each one of us must make this decision 
for himself, and in his own heart. The will of 
man, the affections, and the persuasions of his 
heart, is his spiritual house. It is the house in 
which he abides as to his motives, his purposes, 
his desires, in the conduct of his daily life. 
Here in this spiritual house of the will every 
man decides whether or not Jesus is his God 
and Saviour. He has heard what the Church 



INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY. 141 

says of Him, what the high-priest and the 
Pharisees dispute concerning Him, and now 
it is for him to decide, not from any outward 
compulsion, from no temporary excitement of 
the feelings, from no sudden fears, from no 
terrifying threats, but in the still privacy of 
his own heart, in the turning of his own affec- 
tions to the Lord or to the world, toward 
heaven or toward hell, and in the formation 
of a permanent principle of life, good or evil, 
he is to decide whether he is for or against the 
Lord. It is a question that concerns himself 
and not another. It is a question which he and 
no other can decide. It is a question of his 
own inward life, — of that inner heart which 
God sees and reads, but w r hich men know 
little of. It is a question of what is most inti- 
mate, most private, most real, most essentially 
his own. 

" Am I a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ ?" 

Books, learning, disputes, reasonings, 

preachings are by. The man is returned into 



142 THE RETURN HOME ; OR, 

his own heart, his soul's house. What witness 
does his life there, as known to none but him- 
self and God, bear concerning his acknowl- 
edgment or rejection of Jesus the Saviour, 
the True God and Eternal Life ? 

" And every man went unto his own house. ,, 
When we have been in church and heard 
the Lord's Word read and have been in- 
structed from his holy doctrine concerning 
our religious duties, our duties to God and to 
our neighbor, then it is as true of us spirit- 
ually as literally, that " every man goes unto 
his own house." We go to our homes one 
one way, another another, each to his own 
peculiar station, place, calling, and circum- 
stances in life. No one person's home is just 
like that of another. Our homes are the 
nearest things to our hearts, and, as a general 
rule, they best portray our hearts. The out- 
ward visible home corresponds to the inward 
invisible home of the will. Not that the things 
themselves which a man has about him, the 



INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY. 1 43 

creations of his wealth, the work of the archi- 
tect or the upholsterer, always bespeak the 
heart, the kind of home within. Many a gor- 
geous, most beautiful, and cheerful palace 
shelters a man or woman whose soul's house 
is gloomier than a dungeon and foul with the 
damps of caverns ; and as truly are there 
beneath humble roofs and amid plain walls 
many fair and heavenly mansions growing 
up in loving, Christian souls, bright with the 
sunshine of heaven, and adorned as with all 
beautiful and precious stones. In the spiritual 
world, indeed, in heaven and in hell, a man's 
house is always the picture of his heart and 
his inward life ; for there the ruling love of a 
man shapes the outer world into conformity 
with itself. Here on earth it is not wholly so, 
although the principle holds true here, in some 
degree. For it is an accepted maxim that four 
walls do not make a home. That is, a man's 
home, or his " own house," consists not in the 
natural things he may chance to have accu- 



144 THE RETURN HOME; OR, 

mulated about him, the rich in abundance, the 
poor in scanty supply, but rather in the gen- 
eral sphere, the order, the sentiment, the kind 
of principle, in a word, that pervades everything 
in the house, that makes everything to be in 
some way expressive of the inward character 
and disposition of the inmates. How different 
does the same house look when another occu- 
pant has moved into it ! We carry our homes 
with us; for we have the real soul's house, the 
spiritual house, w r ithin us, and this is what 
shapes to itself somehow the house we inhabit 
and makes it to become home to us. Now, 
what I would say is, that when, after the 
church service is over, we go " every man to his 
own house/' we do really go to our own homes 
spiritually as well as literally. For in going- 
back into the house we inhabit, into the family, 
into all the domestic and social relations which 
belong to us there, we go back into our or- 
dinary inward state of life ; we put on, so to 
speak, our every-day clothes; we are ourselves, 



INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY. 1 45 

thinking, speaking, and willing in freedom, 
out of the spontaneous impulses of the heart. 
The holy state of worship which the external 
rites of the Church has brought upon us is 
now removed ; we enter into our ordinary 
familiar moods and ways. And here are we 
to put to use what we have heard and learned 
in church concerning the Lord and our spir- 
itual duties. Here if anywhere are we to de- 
termine whether or not we will lead the Chris- 
tian life ; whether we will try to put to practice 
the holy lessons we have learned, and so to 
take up our cross and follow the Lord in the 
regeneration. 

It is the reverse of this in the judgments 
mostly sought for in the world. Men are more 
concerned about the opinion which is formed 
from their life out-of-doors than about what 
men think of their ways of living in the privacy 
of their homes and families. Respectability, not 
to say honesty, purity, and gentle manners, are 
often cultivated with great care for the opin- 



146 THE RETURN HOME; OR, 

ion of men in public and social life, and quite 
forgotten when men have returned to their own 
homes. This, indeed, should not be so, and 
that it is so shows how artificial and false our 
life is when shaped after the common worldly 
pattern. We need a higher standard to live by 
than " the way that other people do." God gives 
us the higher, better pattern in his Holy Word. 
It is here that we are taught to make clean the 
inside as well as the outside of the platter, and 
to act always in the holy fear of Him who seeth 
in secret. 

Here it is most commonly about a man's 
public life and conduct, — his manners on the 
street, or in the office, or in the public worship 
or in the social assembly, — that we hear opinions 
expressed, " Such an one is a gentleman ; is so 
generous; so pure in spirit and thought, so con- 
siderate, so truthful, so unselfish !" Would the 
judgment be always the same were the door 
opened into that man's own house ? Is it there 
under his own roof, and with those who are his 



IXDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY. 147 

neighbors in the nearest and most important 
sense, that the man is just, true, gentle, and 
kind ? 

In the other world to which we are going 
this will, I say, all be reversed. Then it will 
be asked not alone what a man has spoken on 
the house-tops, but what he has whispered in 
the ear and in closets ; not what a man's pub- 
lic life, but what a man's private life, has been ; 
not what he did or said in the company of the 
man whose good opinion he courted, but what 
he did when he had " returned to his own house." 

Unless, when we so have returned each one 
unto his own house, we there remember what we 
have heard, unless we try to practice the laws 
of heavenly life there amid the common duties 
and trials which make up our real week-day 
life, we are far from being the followers of the 
Lord. We are like those of whom the Lord 
says, " This people honor me with their lips 
but their hearts are far from me." Ah, what a 
solemn thought it is, that God has so ordained 



148 THE RETURN HOME; OR, 

the way of our regeneration that every man, 
on hearing the Word of Life, " shall go unto 
his own house !" that with every man lies the 
responsibility of saving or destroying his soul, 
and that this issue lies in the man's own private 
life, the life of his soul's home, the life of his 
ruling affections and principles of conduct ! It 
is not enough that we be pious and zealous 
Christians in the house of God. The question 
is, What are we when " every man has gone 
unto his own house" ? Is it possible that the 
soul is made fit for heaven at once because 
smitten with the terrors of hell as depicted by a 
zealous preacher, or warmed by the momentary 
enthusiasm of a multitude ? Shall we think that 
the sensuous excitement produced by eloquent 
oratory or music, or any ecstasy of the mind 
under the influence of fear or persuasion or 
personal magnetism, is really a changing of 
the heart ? the making over of the old life with 
its familiar besetting sins into a pure, heavenly, 
saintly life in an instant of time ? 



INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY, 149 

Ah ! how is it when, after such a season of 
strained emotion and unnatural excitement, 
"every man has gone unto his own house"? 
How is it when the self-deluded convert, who 
shouted aloud the tidings of his salvation in the 
ears of the multitude the night before, wakes 
up in the morning to find himself no more in 
the "house of prayer," but in the house of his 
own old lusts and passions, his old w r orldly 
loves, his selfish, earthly aims ; when he finds 
his heart and its affections the same as before, 
the same old temptations returning to him with 
renewed force, the same cunning plea of the 
devil in his ear, the same voice of flattery and 
sinful pleasure and unholy gain whispering to 
him from the world ? Then, indeed, he knows 
that " every man has returned unto his own 
house." 

Happy if, discovering his delusion, and seeing 
then the awful distinction between a temporary 
pious emotion and the religion of everyday- 
life, — the difference between acknowledging 

13* 



150 THE RETURN HOME; OR, 

the Lord and shouting his praises in the con- 
gregation and inwardly worshiping and obeying 
Him at home in his soul's own house, — happy 
if he be not discouraged! Happy if the evil 
spirit, seeking rest and finding none, return not 
into him with sevenfold power, and make the 
last state of that man to be worse than the first ! 

We would not hinder any sincere effort or 
means of rousing men to a sense of the perils 
of an evil, ungodly life, — of lifting their thoughts 
to heaven and to God ; but we would that men 
were taught that the test of conversion is not 
in the momentary, transient emotions of the 
hour of prayer, but in the state of life which is 
entered upon when " every man has gone unto 
his own house." 

Some there are — alas, too many ! — who hear 
sermons in church, and then go carrying its 
application, not every man to his own house, 
but to the house of his neighbor, — hearing for 
others, not themselves, and letting the stern 
judgments of the truth fall on the evils they 



INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY. 151 

detect in others, rather than on the foes of 
their own household. Let every man, when the 
Lord has given him light, carry that light with 
him unto his own house; to cast thus the beam 
out of his own eye before he seeketh to cast 
the mote out of his brother's eye. 

There draweth near to all of us the day and 
the hour when the Lord shall call us away from 
these temporary homes of earth and the nat- 
ural body, and when in the resurrection and 
the judgment every man shall go unto his own 
house. Here in the world we have heard the 
Word of God ; we have learned of the Lord 
our Saviour; we have been taught those Di- 
vine commandments which are the way of 
eternal life. Here it is in our power, by prayer, 
by looking to the Lord, by shunning our evils 
as sins, by faithfully fulfilling our duties, to ac- 
quire, through the Lord's ever-present help, a 
regenerated will, a heart impelled by heavenly 
motives and fit for the enjoyment of heavenly 
delights. Such a regenerated will is the soul's 



152 THE RETURN HOME. 

home, which the good man carries with him 
into the other world ; it is his mansion not 
made with hands, eternal in the heavens. In 
our Father's house, which is in heaven, are 
many such mansions ; and may it be our en- 
deavor here to be building for ourselves, by 
the practice of a holy Christian life, such spir- 
itual homes ! that it may be into these heavenly 
mansions that we may, by the Divine mercy, 
enter, in that day when " every man shall go 
unto his own house/' 



13:. 

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£pi*ittt«t gift to |ttan. 



7>^ words that I speak* unto you, they are spirit, and they 
are life. — St. John vi. 63. 



OUR Lord, in speaking to his disciples about 
the bread of heaven, says, " Verily, I say 
unto you, He that believeth on me hath ever- 
lasting life. I am that bread of life. Your 
fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and 
are dead. This is the bread which cometh 
down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, 
and not die. I am the living bread which came 
down from heaven : if any man eat of this 
bread, he shall live forever: and the bread 
that I will give is my flesh, which I will give 
for the life of the world.'' 

g* 153 



154 THE WORD OF LIFE. 

Here our Lord most plainly tells us that 
there is such a thing as heavenly bread,' — 
nourishment given to the souls of men, — which 
shall be to them eternal life, in like manner 
as food given to the body sustains the natural 
life. He says, moreover, that He Himself 
is that bread, that He is that bread of life, come 
down from heaven to give "Himself to men for 
the life of the world ; and, finally, to declare 
this truth in its most forcible and unmistakable 
form, He says, " The bread that I will give is 
my flesh, which I will give for the life of the 
world." " For my flesh is meat indeed, and 
my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my 
flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, 
and I in him. He hath eternal life, and I will 
raise him up at the last day." 

It is not surprising, then, that the Jews who 
heard our Lord say this, understanding his 
words only in a natural sense, exclaimed, in 
wonder, " How can this man give us his flesh 
to eat?" Nor even that the disciples, when 



THE WORD OF LIFE. 1 55 

they had heard this, said, " This is an hard 
saying; who can hear it?" 

Yes, it is an hard saying, if the Lord's words 
are like human words, having only a finite 
natural meaning. But not such are the words 
which God speaks. And Jesus, when He knew 
that his hearers were disturbed by this saying, 
— too hard for them to comprehend, — explains 
Himself in these simple and memorable 
words : " It is the spirit that quickeneth ; the 
flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak 
unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. ,, 

It is not, then, of natural flesh and blood 
that He has been speaking. Natural flesh or 
bodily food does not give life to the soul. 
The bread of heaven, the flesh and blood of 
the Lord Jesus, must be something spiritual if 
it is to quicken, to give eternal life, soul-life, to 
men. It must be the flesh and the blood of his 
Divine, and not of his natural, earthly body 
that Ke is speaking when He says, " He that 
eateth me, he shall live by me !" 



156 THE WORD OF LIFE. 

The flesh of the Lord's Divine Body is the 
Good of his Divine Love : the blood of his 
Divine Body is the Truth of his Divine Wis- 
dom, — -Good and Truth from the Lord re- 
ceived into the soul are eternal life in man. 
The man who lives by the Lord, in receiving 
and appropriating in his soul and in his spirit- 
ual life the heavenly bread of Divine Good 
and Divine Truth, he has in him even now the 
everlasting life, and in this life he shall be 
raised up at the last day. This is what it is 
to dwell in the Lord and to have the Lord 
dwell in us. For this is conjunction of our 
life with the Lord. This bread of heaven — 
the good of love communicated to our affec- 
tions, the good of wisdom communicated to 
our understanding from the Lord's Divine 
Humanity — this is the Spirit that quickeneth, 
that giveth immortal life. 

But how does the Lord actually give us this 
spiritual food from Himself? How did He give 
it then ? How does He give it now ? 



THE WORD OF LIFE. 1 57 

The words above quoted answer our ques- 
tion. The Lord has said that men receive 
their soul's life from Him; and He has said that 
this life is not got by eating natural food, such 
as the " fathers did eat in the wilderness and 
are dead/' but that it is got by the Spirit ; for 
the Spirit and not natural flesh is what gives life. 
And now He tells us how He gives us this Spirit 
and Life : "The words that I have spoken unto 
you, they are Spirit and they are Life." 

The Lord's w r ords themselves Spirit and 
Life ! Here, then, is where men shall feed 
their souls ; here is where men shall eat and 
drink spiritually of the Divine Body of the 
Lord. Here in the Word of God, in the 
words which the Lord speaks to men, which 
words are verily Spirit and Life, — here men 
shall verily find, and are enabled to take into 
their actual daily life, the Divine Good of Love, 
which is the Lord's flesh, and the Divine Truth 
of Wisdom, which is the Lord's blood. Here 
in the Holy Scriptures is the bread of heaven, 

14 



158 THE WORD OF LIFE. 

the flesh and blood of the Lord's Divine Hu- 
manity given from heaven, yea, from God Him- 
self, for the life of the whole world. He that, 
from the Word of God, eateth of this bread, 
shall live forever, and God will raise him up at 
the last day. For the Divine Good imparted 
to men through the written Word of God is 
meat indeed, and the Divine Truth here im- 
parted to men is drink indeed. Directly from 
this Word, from reading, loving, and obeying 
it themselves, or indirectly through the teach- 
ing and influence of others, all men to-day 
have whatever they have of spiritual life. 

For the Word is God's revelation of Him- 
self to men ; through the Word God gives 
Himself to men ; and in the Word men must 
eat and drink of the only food that can impart 
eternal life to the soul. By the Word we 
mean that Word which God has given us in 
the Holy Scriptures ; we mean the Word not 
only in its language, but in its institutions, its 
ordinances, and especially in the holy Sacra- 



77/ /■; Word of life. 159 

ments. The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper 
is the Word enacted, — uttered in actions, and 
not in speech or thoughts merely. So in Bap- 
tism, and in all the ordinances of Christian 
worship, which are enactments of the Word, or 
the literal Word carried into act. These are 
still the Word, and as such have the Spirit and 
the Life of the Word in them. When we read 
in the Scriptures the Lord's Prayer, we receive 
the Word in our thoughts ; when we pray in 
these words, the Word becomes more than a 
thought in our minds, — it becomes a form, an 
act. When we read of the Lord's institution 
of the Holy Supper, the Word is then in any 
mind a thought. When we actually go forward 
and present ourselves at the Lord's table and 
take the bread and the wine bodily, and thus do 
this holy rite of worship in remembrance of 
Him, and not merely read of it and think of it, 
the Word of God is thereby uttered or ex- 
pressed in the most powerful manner possible. 
But, besides uttering or enacting the Word, 



160 THE WORD OF LIFE. 

translating it from speech to actions, as is done 
in all that may be comprehended under the 
term of preaching the gospel, which term in- 
cludes all the external ordinances of worship, — 
besides thus declaring the Word of God, we 
are also commanded by the Lord to do it. 
11 Blessed are they who hear the Word of God 
and do it." The doing the Word is something 
quite different from performing its Divine or- 
dinances. When we keep the; Divine Com- 
mandments in our daily life, we do the Word 
of God, — we make it a principle of our life. 
The Word thus becomes a thing of life with 
us, not a momentary ceremony or act of ex- 
ternal worship. Doing God's Word in the 
daily life is actual religion ; performing the 
ordinances of Divine worship as instituted in 
the Word is the means to this religion. Read- 
ing the Word is not doing it, and yet we must 
read the Word in order to do it. And the holy 
Sacraments, preaching, and other Divine ordi- 
nances to be practiced by men, are reading 



THE WORD OF LIFE. l6l 

the Word in actions, rather than in silent con- 
templation of the printed page. But, never- 
theless, the Sacraments and all the rites of 
worship which instruct, influence, and help men 
in leading the religious life, these remain just 
as truly the Word of the Lord, since they are 
founded or instituted in the Word, and as 
such they are likewise the means of spiritual 
nourishment to the soul, for they are Spirit and 
they are Life. And from the Word in its writ- 
ten volume, or in the enactment of its sacred 
rites of worship, comes directly or indirectly 
all the spiritual sustenance which men in this 
world receive, and by which they can be re- 
generated and brought into the heavenly life. 

There are indeed many people in Christian 
lands who do not see the Word of God nor 
hear it from year's end to year's end, who yet 
live under its sanctifying influences as felt in 
the moral and religious sense of society about 
them. It may be only in the sound of the 
church-bell, or the sight of the church-spire, 

14* 



1 62 THE WORD OF LIFE. 

or the simple outline of the cross surmount- 
ing a church-gate or pinnacle, or the sacred 
picture on the wall or in the window, or the 
sight of a child praying, or the voice of a 
street-preacher, or the taking of an oath on 
the Holy Bible in the civil court; who can tell 
all the thousand voices by which the Word of 
God in a Christian land speaks to men in all 
conditions of life, and awakens in their minds 
that " thought of God" which is the first thing 
that opens heaven to their souls ? 

The Words of the Lord are Spirit and Life. 
Like the atmosphere which we cannot see, but 
which is full of mighty agencies for producing 
physical effects, so the Word of God in its 
spiritual outgoings in a Christian community 
pervades everything, — it influences opinion, 
feeling, behavior, — and makes itself felt by 
those who rarely or never think definitely of 
its existence. So little do men know of the 
Spirit of God's Word, whence it cometh and 
whither it goeth, that learned men, living in 



THE WORD OF LIFE. 1 63 

the light of Divine Truth, write treatises on 
immortality, God, the soul, and spiritual life, — 
about which they would know nothing at all 
except for a primitive Revelation from God, — 
and yet declare that the light is all their own, 
human light, that of merely human reason 
and intelligence, and that whatever of God is 
known at all has been found out by their rea- 
sonings, and not by Divine communication ! 
Spiritual Light and Life all comes from God 
alone to men, just as all natural light and life 
comes from the sun of our universe, and it is 
the Word of God which is Truth Divine, or 
God Himself in the Word which gives spiritual 
light to the world. God is the Light of the 
world. And the Spirit of life goes out from 
his Word, like light from the sun, through the 
social and moral atmosphere of society. But 
for this there would be no such thing among- 
men as a sense of justice, of mercy, of right, 
of duty, of conscience, of faith, or the hope of 
immortality. 



1 64 THE WORD OF LIFE. 

Again, there are whole nations, the heathen 
nations, as they are called, who have not the 
written Word, and who yet have religion, who 
worship a Deity, who have a Divine law of 
right and wrong. Whence do they have these 
ideas of the Divine, the good, and the true ? 
From themselves, — their own thinking out? 
From their perverted religion of mythology 
and idolatry ? No ! So far as they have a 
single ray of Divine Truth, so far as they have 
the Truth at all, they have it from the Word of 
God. And how do these heathen nations have 
the light of the Word ? How can they, too, 
live by its Spirit and its Life, and so inherit 
the life eternal ? They have the Spirit and 
Life of the Word in two ways. 

First, outwardly ; by tradition, which has 
preserved in their religions something of the 
primitive Word or revelation which God made 
to man in his Golden Age of innocence, sym- 
bolically described by the Garden of Eden, 
and referred to in the sacred traditions of all 



THE WORD OF LIFE. 1 65 

nations that have a literature and a history, — 
that holy celestial Church on earth wherein God 
" talked with man." The Truth then given to 
mankind has still been preserved, in broken 
fragments, it may be, but still in some measure, 
even among the heathen, the idolatrous. It is 
from this gleam of light from the primitive 
Word that they know that there is a Deity, and 
that there is a law of right and wrong. They 
have also, some of them, the light of the Word 
through their fellowship with those Christian 
nations which have the written Word, through 
their outward commercial relations, and their 
knowledge of the world's history. 

But there is, secondly, an inward way by 
which the Spirit and Life of the Word of God 
reaches and quickens these heathen nations. 
It is through the spiritual communion of earth 
with heaven, of human beings here with good 
spirits and angels there. The Word which 
we have here on earth in the letter exists with 
the angels in heaven in Spirit and in Life, and 



1 66 THE WORD OF LIFE. 

its spiritual meat and drink is given every- 
where to the souls of men by the ministries of 
angels, and by direct inflowing from the Lord, 
the Divine Word Himself, according to the 
various capacities of men to receive it and live 
by it. The Spirit of the Word of God is like 
the sunshine, which embraces the whole earth 
in its warm, life-giving rays. As Divine Life 
flows down and becomes our natural life 
through the visible sun of our universe, so the 
Divine Word flows spiritually down to en- 
lighten the whole world through our visible 
and literal written Bible. As the whole body 
lives from the blood sent pulsating to every 
minutest fibre from the central heart and lungs, 
so the whole race of man on earth lives spirit- 
ually from the Spirit and Life emanating from 
the Lord's written Word on earth, and from 
the Church where it is known, received, and 
applied to the life. We may not, indeed, un- 
derstand how this is accomplished, but it is 
enough to know that it is God's wisdom and 



THE WORD OF LIFE. 1 67 

God's love that accomplishes it, and " his ways 
are past finding out." The Words that God 
has spoken to us are Spirit and Life, — they are 
the soul's meat and drink. Spirit and Life are 
not confined to space or subject to material, 
visible agencies. We hear their sound of 
the Spirit in our written Word, but we know 
not whence it cometh or whither it goeth. The 
Spirit and Life of the Word are as wide and 
as infinite as God. " Their sound is gone out 
into all the earth, and their words to the end of 
the world ! There is no speech nor language 
where their voice is not heard '/" 

There is one Word, one life-giving Spirit, 
one Saviour, one God, for all the earth, all 
people, all worlds. To us this life-giving Spirit 
is given clothed in the literal sense of our Holy 
Scriptures. It resides in it as the soul in the 
body of man. But even with man his soul's 
influence and life may extend where his body 
is not, — through miles of space, through ages 
of years ! How much more with the Divine, 



1 68 THE WORD OF LIFE. 

Infinite Spirit of Truth, which, while it is re- 
vealed in the body of our written Word, yet 
pervades all the heavens and the spiritual 
world everywhere, and gives to every man the 
spiritual sustenance his soul needs ! The 
heathen nations, then, have the Word of God 
outwardly by remains of revealed Truth from 
the primitive Word handed down in their 
sacred traditions, and inwardly by the all- 
pervading, all-illuming Spirit of God, the sole 
Light and Life of man. 

But are there those in this day who, when 
told that the Words of God are verily Spirit 
and Life, and, therefore, that men must eat and 
drink of the Divine Good and Truth given to 
us men in the written volume of the Holy 
Bible if they will have eternal life, — are there 
those who will exclaim, with the Jews of old, 
" How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" 
How can this printed book give immortal food 
to the souls of men? and who murmur with 
the disciples that " this is an hard saying" ? 



THE WORD OF LIFE. 1 69 

Then it is because they know and believe not 
the Divinity of this Son of man. They know 
not that the Bible is Divine, that it is full of 
Divine Life, that it is the great medium by 
which heaven and earth, man and the Lord, 
may come into spiritual union, and by which 
the Lord may give us the flesh of his own 
Divine Humanity to eat. They think the Holy 
Bible is like any other book, merely a human 
composition, containing nothing deeper than 
what we see on the surface of the letter, con- 
taining only human, finite ideas and narrations 
that relate to the earth and natural visible 
things. Like the Jews, who regarded Jesus 
as only human like themselves, they exclaim, 
"How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" 
But if they knew that it is not man but God 
that dwells in the written Word, — God the 
Life-Giver, God the mighty Redeemer, God 
who, by his Word, created the heavens and 
the earth, and who now, by his Word, creates 
anew or regenerates the soul of man, — would 
h 15 



170 THE WORD OF LIFE. 

they then doubt that these spoken Words of 
God are verily Spirit and Life, and that in 
them the soul finds its meat and drink unto 
life everlasting? 

God dwells in the Word which He has given 
to us men in human language, just as He 
dwells in the visible natural creation He has 
made. Trees and flowers, and sun and stars, 
are not God ; they live only from Him, and 
are sustained every moment only by his in- 
flowing Spirit. " Thou sendest forth thy SpiiHt; 
they are created, and thou renew est t lie face of the 
whole earth!' So the Bible, as a volume of 
paper and print, is not God; but the Truth, the 
Spirit that is in it, its meaning, its moral and 
spiritual power in the mind of man, this is Di- 
vine, this is God ; for this is the Word that is 
ever with God and is God. The words that we 
utter are to our ears but sound, vibrations of 
air ; but to the mind they are more than matter: 
they are thought, thus spirit, and in this sense 
ourselves. So in the higher Divine sense, God 



THE WORD OF LIFE. I/I 

through his Words, spoken not to our out- 
ward hearing, but to our hearts, gives to us 
of his infinite Spirit and Life. In his Word 
He gives us of his flesh to eat. Should we 
not indeed feed upon it with our souls, and 
be thankful ? 

We are very apt to fall short of the truth 
in thinking- of the Word of God that it is 
" Spirit and Life," because it has an internal 
meaning" or spiritual sense ! This is, indeed, 
true, but not the whole truth. The Word of 
God not only means, when rightly interpreted, 
spiritual things, but it is Spirit and Life ! It 
is Spirit and Life to every one who devoutly 
and affectionately reads it with a view to living 
by it, whether he knows anything of the spirit- 
ual sense or not. For by the Word, read 
affectionately by man, the Lord and the angels 
come into close union with him and with the 
Church on earth ; and when the Lord is near 
his Life-Giving Spirit is near, and flows in 
hidden ways into the secret chambers of the 



\J2 THE WORD OF LIFE. 

soul, and springs up there in fountains of 
everlasting life. 

" The Words that I have spoken unto you, 
are spirit and are life." "The Bread of God 
is He that cometh down from heaven to give 
life unto the world. I am that Bread of Life." 

So closely does our Lord connect in his 
teaching his own gifts of love and truth with 
the gift of the Word which He has spoken. 
He is the Bread of Life. His spoken words 
are Life. To his Word, then, we must come 
for our Bread of Life, for our soul's meat and 
drink. 

Let Christians remember this as a truth 
most deserving of constant application in their 
daily life. If we are seeking spiritual life, let 
us seek it there where God gives us the Bread 
of heaven, — the soul's true food, — namely, in 
his spoken and written Word. Let us find 
our soul's daily meat and drink in the devout 
reading every day of some poi tion, even 
though it be but a few verses, of this sacred 



THE WORD OF LIFE. 1 73 

volume. Think not of the quantity to be read, 
nor be anxious in selecting what to read ! 
Think only of yourself, as needing in your soul 
the Bread of Life, and of God, as present in 
his Holy Word, ready to give to every one 
that asketh. Little by little, as the body grows, 
the spirit fed on heavenly food will grow like- 
wise. We may not see the immediate good, 
any great spiritual change in us on our com- 
mencing thus religiously to read the Word of 
God. But the Spirit of God worketh in secret 
and in silence. If we have gone to God's 
Word seeking Life, it will be given us, — given 
us in such measure as our understanding can 
admit its Truth and as our will can admit its 
Good. There may be purgings and cleansings 
necessary to remove the falsities of the evil 
heart, and, close to the sinful dispositions, the 
selfish desires of the natural life, the Word of 
God may seem to fall cold, hard, and lifeless. 
Be not deceived nor discouraged by this out- 
ward appearance. Imitate not the folly of 

15* 



174 THE WORD OF LIFE. 

those who first deny that the Scriptures are 
Divine, and then complain that they derive no 
Divine light and comfort from their study ; 
who ask only serpents and stones, and then 
grumble because they have not fish and bread 
given them ! See that your heart still desires 
the Bread of heaven, and seeks it from the 
Lord in his Word. To the son that asketh a 
fish the heavenly Father will not give a serpent, 
nor a stone to him that asketh Bread. 



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not ixn gt^embttj of pevfectext |Ucn m& Women. 



I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. — 

St. Luke v. 32. 



IT is recorded in the Holy Gospel that our 
Lord once gave a great supper in his own 
house, and there were many present who had 
followed Him from the wayside and throughout 
the country where He had been journeying ; 
there were doubtless the fishermen whom He 
had called from their nets, and many a one 
from the great multitude who had resorted 
unto Him at the seaside, and of those, too, 
most likely, who surrounded his house at Ca- 
pernaum in such numbers that they could not 
bring a certain man sick of the palsy to Him 
by the door, but were obliged to lift*up the 

i75 



176 NOT THE RIGHTEOUS, 

bed over the people's heads and lower it 
down through the roof; and Levi we know 
was there, whom He had just called from the 
receipt of custom, and, not unlikely, many a 
poor man and woman who had been blind and 
now saw, or lame and now walked, or covered 
with the loathsome leprosy and was now 
clean and whole again ; and all these, we can 
imagine, with mingled feelings of wonder and 
joy stood by at that feast and had some little 
consciousness within them of the real character 
of Him who was in their midst. For there 
were many there, says the account as we read 
it in St. Mark's Gospel, and publicans and sin- 
ners, and they sat with Jesus and his disciples. 

Thus, " in his own house," our Lord did sit 
at meat with publicans and sinners, and they 
were many, and they followed Him. 

There is more meaning, more stirring pa- 
thos, in this little verse than in all the eulogies 
on the Divine Compassion ever uttered by 
human" lips. With our finite vision, our poor 



BUT SINNERS CALLED. 1 77 

natural notions, we can derive but little Hgfht 
from this sublime passage wherein is portrayed, 
like a picture of the heavens and earth in 
the retina of the eye, the entire story of our 
Lord's Incarnation and Glorification. But this 
little ray of light comes to us from the spir- 
itual glory that burns beneath the letter, — that 
the house in which our Lord dwells means the 
doctrine which He believed and taught ; and 
this doctrine is,' "Love one another as I have 
loved you ;" and all who received this doctrine 
and fed their souls upon it did really sit at 
meat with Him in his house : and such were 
his followers. Now, the righteous scribes and 
Pharisees stood without or walked by, doubt- 
less, avoiding all contact with such vulgar com- 
pany, and while pretending a kind of respect 
for the Lord, inquired of his disciples about 
this supper : " How is it that He eateth and 
drinketh with publicans and sinners ?" 

O Pharisee, keep your clean robes intact ! 
Venture not too near this plebeian throng ! 



178 NOT THE RIGHTEOUS, 

Leave the humble house where the poor, the 
lame, halt, blind, and leprous, only lately made 
to know the common joys of life, — where the 
abandoned outcast, the homeless, the hopeless 
but of yesterday now sit at the feet of their 
healer, their consoler, and ask not for lordlier 
or more stately company than this poor motley 
crowd, with Jesus in its midst! Go up to your 
own high places, Pharisee and publican, and 
think upon this new word which the Master 
sends to you in answer to your inquiry, " I 
came not to call the righteous, but sinners to 
repentance" ! 

And so let these words come home to Chris- 
tian hearts, and with so much of their Divine 
meaning as we shall be enabled to discover, 
remembering- that in the sight of God no man 
living is justified ; and taking care lest, vainly 
numbering ourselves among the righteous, 
we become deaf to that call to repentance 
which it was for publicans and sinners alone to 
hear. 



BUT SINNERS CALLED. 179 

That was, indeed, a new word in those times, 
" to call sinners to repentance." For the right- 
eous every promise had been made, every offer 
held out, every hope encouraged ; but to call 
the sinner to repentance, this had not belonged 
to the religious system of the Jews. And who 
were these righteous? They were the Pharisees 
and scribes, — those scrupulous observers of 
the law ; those men well versed in the religious 
books, to whom every minute rite and cere- 
mony of the Jewish ritual was familiar ; those 
who made long prayers and wore sad coun- 
tenances and looked for the worldly prosperity, 
the earthly re-establishment, of the Israelitish 
kingdom. The heaven of the Pharisee, or, 
rather, his conception of the kingdom of God 
on earth, was not broad ; a petty community 
of strict ritualists, externally supporting the 
ancient observances of the Jewish Church, this 
would suffice for the Messiah of the nations ; 
the poor, the humble, the ignorant, and the 
Gentiles, they were of little account in the 



180 NOT THE RIGHTEOUS, 

Pharisee's reckoning. And yet, behold Jesus, 
the Messiah, sitting at meat with publicans and 
sinners ! 

The publicans were a low and hated class of 
the people, whose occupation was collecting the 
taxes under their Roman masters ; and the 
sinners, they were, doubtless, very much the 
same class of beings as those persons nowa- 
days who are spoken of by that name. At least, 
the term did not include the Pharisee and the 
scribe ; no more in our day does the name 
sinner often fall upon the pious out-door Chris- 
tian of respectable position. But, however this 
may be, we know simply that while that "right- 
eous" Pharisee walked by in scorn, our Lord 
did sit at meat in his own house with publicans 
and sinners. 

Now, there w r as a deep and solemn meaning 
in that reply of his to the Pharisee's inquiry, 
" How is it that thy master eateth and drinketh 
with publicans and sinners ?" " I am not come," 
is the Divine response, " to call the righteous, 



BUT SINNERS CALLED. 181 

but sinners to repentance." It is evident 
enough that the Pharisee was not, indeed, 
righteous ; but that lie is called so here because 
he seemed so to himself. If there had been 
true righteousness in the Jewish Church, as 
represented by this its ruling class, then the 
end of that Church had not come, it had 
not been necessary for Christ, the Messiah, to 
come at that time to save the world. But the 
fact was far otherwise. The race of mankind 
was perishing in evil, because the Church was 
dead. All men were alike sinners ; all were 
alike swept down under the tyrannous rule 
of the prince of this world. 

" None calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth 
for truth ; they trust in vanity and speak lies. 

/'Judgment is turned away backward; jus- 
tice standeth afar off; for truth is fallen in the 
street, and equity cannot enter." 

So describes the prophet the state of the 

Church at that day, when the clean and dainty 

Pharisee was to ask of the Saviour of. the 

16 



1 82 NOT THE RIGHTEOUS, 

world, "How is it that he eateth with publicans 
and sinners?" Thus, we see that when our 
Lord spoke of the righteous whom He came 
not to call, although He referred to the self- 
righteous Pharisee, yet He by no means would 
teach that Pharisee, or those like him, that 
he was not alike in need of repentance. 
No ; the truth is, the Pharisee was not called 
by the Saviour to repentance, simply because 
he would not hear ; the wall of his vain 
conceit, his foolishly-imagined righteousness, 
which consisted, as he believed, in external 
observance, while the heart was corrupt with 
evil within, this kept every cry of warning, 
every call to repentance, from his ear. When 
he went to the temple to pray, he could 
not fall down, smite upon his breast, and 
say, "God be merciful to me a sinner;" but 
rather he thanked God that he was not as 
other men are, and set forth a fair account of 
his fasting twice in the week, of his giving 
tithes of all that he possessed, and so on 



BUT SINNERS CALLED. 1 83 

through the roll of his virtues. Such men 
have their reward, saith our Saviour, when 
speaking of their external religion ; but what 
a poor, petty, shallow reward is that, — the glory 
of men, a proud name in the world, and the 
tyrant of self in the heart, with all his lusts 
and deceits, to rule and reign there forever 
and forever ! 

Now, how is it with those poor publicans 
and sinners' who sat at meat in the Lord's 
house with Him and were his followers ? 
These were even the class whom Jesus Christ 
came into the world to call to repentance ; not 
that they needed repentance more, not that 
they needed it less, than other men who bore 
fairer titles, but because being known, de- 
nounced, shunned as publicans and sinners, 
they were willing to appear, or were obliged 
to appear, to the world what they were, and 
thus really appeared to themselves in the true 
light of their own wretchedness. For the 
opinion of the world, and especially its evil 



1 84 NOT THE RIGHTEOUS, 

opinion, is often a mirror in which we may see 
reflected a much truer picture of ourselves 
than we are wont to find when looking at our 
hearts through the medium of our own opinion 
only. These publicans were doubtless well 
represented by that one of their number who, 
when he went up to pray, dared not look up 
to God; so vile and degraded a being he really 
felt himself to be, he could only smite upon 
his breast, and cry out, " God be merciful to 
me a sinner !" And the others of that motley 
assembly, they had been afflicted with many 
troubles, were a poor troop of vagabonds, but 
they had found a man who spoke not as the 
scribes, but with authority, who healed their 
diseases as well as blessed them ; who taught 
them how to pray to their Father in heaven ; 
who told them what was forgiveness, what was 
mutual love, what was the treasure worth 
seeking after, and how they could become 
children of God and come into his kingdom. 
Now, these poor people were not better than 



BUT SINNERS CALLED. 1 85 

others in their hearts and lives, perhaps, but 
they were willing to hear, to be instructed, to 
be commanded by the Living Incarnate Word 
of God in their midst ; and listening to Him 
and receiving into their minds his instruction, 
they were indeed his followers, although the 
journey of the cross, their life of regene- 
ration, had hardly begun. But such did our 
blessed Lord call to repentance, for such had 
ears to hear, and the call fell not upon them 
unheeded. 

And what does it mean when Christ saith 
to men to-day, as He did to them of old, " I 
came not to call the righteous, but sinners to 
repentance/' Shall we imagine that before Him 
there are righteous men and others who are 
sinful men, and that the righteous are saved in 
any case and only the sinners need to repent? 
That is the falsity of a dead Church, a Church 
that has ceased to be the presence of God as 
the Divine Truth on earth. There is none 
good but one, that is God. Before God there 

16* 



1 86 NOT THE RIGHTEOUS, 

are no men more or less righteous of them- 
selves than others. He beholds the hearts of 
men only as they are more or less open to and 
ready to receive true righteousness from Him. 
The true and living Church of God must speak 
to men in the very words of its Divine Master, 
whose messenger, indeed, is the Church : " I 
am not come to call the righteous, but sinners 
to repentance.'' Let no man too readily class 
himself with the righteous ; so far as he does 
he stops his ear against that call to repentance 
which all need alike to hear. He only who 
feels that he is a sinner can repent. Of what 
can that man repent who thinks there is no- 
thing but righteousness in him ? No ; first we 
must become in our own eyes publicans and 
sinners ; then we shall hear the Lord's call to 
repentance, and happily, by God's grace, come 
and sit at meat with Him in his own house ! 
All men are not indeed alike sinful ; some are 
more righteous men than others ; but these 
are not so of themselves, but of God. The 



B UT SINNERS CA LL ED. 1 8 7 

righteousness that is in them is God's right- 
eousness, and they, only, need not repentance 
who, while they know that their evils are held 
in check, and the good things of heaven given 
into their hearts, yet remember that these good 
things belong to God and not to themselves, 
and that it is only by the Divine power that 
their evils are held in subjection and do not 
rouse themselves again and overcome them. 
So far as a man regards himself as separated 
from, or not dependent upon God, he must be- 
hold in himself a sinner : surely a sinner who 
may be called to repentance, and come to the 
Lord's house to sit at meat with Him, if he 
feels, together with his sins, a sorrow for it 
and a desire to be united to the Lord, rather 
than to continue in this dreary absence of a 
wicked heart ; but doubly a sinner and deaf to 
the Saviour's call if so be he thinks whatever 
of righteousness is in him to be his own, and 
thus turns the light that is in him into dark- 
ness ; thanking God that he is not as other 



1 88 NOT THE RIGHTEOUS, 

men, and thinking to himself what reward his 
righteousness is meriting. This man is rob- 
bing God : surely his righteousness is as filthy 
rags ; the publicans and harlots go into the 
kingdom of God before him. 

There is no greater danger to those who are 
members of religious organizations than this : 
that having united themselves externally to the 
Church and taken the name of church-member, 
they unthinkingly class themselves among the 
righteous, and believe henceforward that the 
call of the Lord to repentance is addressed 
only to those sinners who are without the 
Church. There is no more fatal and unjust 
distinction in the world than a distinction thus 
drawn, — namely, that the Church is for the 
righteous, for those who have no need of re- 
pentance, and that those outside the Church 
are the sinners who need to repent. The 
error is as fatal to the one class as to the 
other. Those in the Church are liable to the 
awful mistake and sin of thinking their salva- 



BUT SINNERS CALLED. 1 89 

tion is accomplished, that their faith alone, their 
acceptance of doctrine, their subscribing to 
articles of belief, — that this places them among 
the righteous ; and those without, feeling, yea, 
having it impressed upon them that the Church 
is not for sinners, but for the righteous only, 
conclude that they have no place there. The 
Messiah is not for them, but for the clean 
Pharisee ; they dare not lift their eyes unto 
heaven, but can only smite upon their breasts in 
their wretchedness and implore God's mercy 
on them ; while they in the Church, they can 
stand up and thank God that they are such 
righteous, just, and pious men. 

Let us have done with this false and ruinous 
distinction. What is the church militant, the 
Church on earth, but the messenger of that 
same Lord and Saviour who sat at meat with 
publicans and sinners ? Whom else does the 
Church call to repentance but sinners ? With 
whom else has the church to do but with 
sinners ? As for the righteous, if there are 



190 NOT THE RIGHTEOUS, 

those within the Church who believe that their 
faith in Church doctrine alone is righteousness, 
they are like the Pharisees, straining at a gnat 
and swallowing a camel. They are so much 
death in the living body of the Church. 

Like the Saviour of old, does the Church 
now come to all classes alike. And if the self- 
righteous are offended in it, because it com- 
mands repentance and actual endeavor to 
subjugate the evils within, and thus to become 
fit vessels of God's righteousness, still, the 
Church is not ashamed to call under its own 
roof the publicans and sinners. Did Christ 
say to the multitude, u Not yet, good people ; 
wait awhile ; when you have become clean and 
learned, like the Pharisees and the scribes, 
then you may come in and eat with me and 
learn of my doctrine" ? Such was not the Sa- 
viour's word to the poor outcast dregs of the 
people; but hear rather what He did say: 
"Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy 
laden, and I will give you rest ; take my yoke 



BUT SINNERS CALLED. 191 

upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek and 
lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest to your 
souls !" 

Shall the Church in our day assume the char- 
acter of a closed fold, wherein only the right- 
eous — the regenerate — sit at meat with the 
Lord ? Shall it not rather be that same house 
of the Lord, — his own house, whose door was 
open to all, however low and sinful and frowned 
upon and despised, who yet, if simply they 
desire to be followers of Him, may come in 
and sit at the Lord's table with his disciples, 
feeling their sinfulness, and not their worthi- 
ness ; conscious of their unsightliness in God's 
sight, and not of their fair looks ? Feeling their 
sinfulness, I say ! and no man can feel his sin- 
fulness whose soul has not once been pierced 
through with the awful probe of God's Word, 
revealing to him, at least, one sin out of the 
host that are there ! Shall the Church say, 
"Wait until you are better; wait until you 
know the doctrines of our faith thoroughly; 



192 KOT THE RIGHTEOUS, 

wait until you can thank God that you are not 
as other men are, and then come into the Tem- 
ple" ? Or shall it simply ask, as did its Divine 
Master of those who wished to be healed of 
the very sins and evils in which they find them- 
selves immersed, " Wilt thou be made whole ? 
If so, follow me, immediately, just as you are, 
leaving your nets, or your seat at the receipt 
of custom, or whatever your occupation be ! 
Come into this the Lord's own house ! Come, 
burdened with your evils and all your spiritual 
infirmities ! Come as you are, but come wish- 
ing to be what you are not ! Come wishing to 
be healed, to be cleansed, to be made better ! 
Come and learn of the true way to health and 
peace under the Lord's roof, not standing with- 
out. Here, in this open house, whenever you 
will come earnestly desiring to follow Him, 
you may sit at meat with Jesus and his disci- 
ples ! The truths of God's Word are open to 
you, — the plain, simple doctrines of the Church 
teaching the way of repentance and regener- 



BUT SINNERS CALLED. 1 93 

ation ; this is the house into which you are to 
enter as sinners and publicans ; and here, by 
actually learning to love and to rule your every- 
day life by these truths and instructions, you 
do verily sit at meat with your Lord" ? 



*7 



<ttxc £trattflc* at the §wt; n PriUtatiott for Christ- 



I was a stranger, and ye took ??ie in. — St. Matt. xxv. 35. 



THESE are the words spoken by our Lord 
to the righteous in the day of judgment. 

And the righteous answer, saying, "When 
saw we Thee a stranger, and took Thee in ?" 

And the King replies, " Inasmuch as ye have 
done it unto one of the teast of these my 
brethren, ye have done it unto me." 

At this season, when the Christian world is 
celebrating the nativity of our Saviour, our 
thoughts are directed to our Lord Jesus Christ 
at that time when He came literally and per- 
sonally a stranger into this our natural world. 

Verily, in that day He Avas a stranger. Did 
the world receive Him ? " He was in the 
194 



THE STRANGER AT THE DOOR. 195 



world, and the world was made by Him, and 
the world knew Him not. He came unto his 
own, and his own received Him not." 

The stranger-child, born of a humble woman 
from far-off Galilee, — did the people of that 
Judean town take Him in to the shelter of 
their houses ? 

No ! Mary, the Virgin - mother, wrapped 
Him "in swaddling-clothes, and laid Him in a 
manger, because there was no room for them 
in the inn." 

A stranger, indeed, in the world was Christ 
the Messiah. Long-expected, heralded by the 
prophets of centuries ; yet, at his coming, un- 
recognized, unknown, — the world's doors shut 
against Him ! 

Yet it has not been ever so. Even in those 
days there were some hearts ready to receive 
Him. Some simple shepherds from the fields 
came with joy to behold, lying in an humb> - 
manger, the child who was to be the Saviour,— 
Christ the Lord. And the wise men of the 



196 THE STRANGER AT THE DOOR; 

East hastened to fall down before Him and 
offer Him their gifts and their worship ; and 
some aged and devout souls, who had waited 
in faith for the consolation of Israel, blessed 
God when they saw the child Jesus, and ut- 
tered, in pious gratitude, " Lord, now lettest 
thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine 
eyes have seen thy salvation. " 

And there were the disciples and the apos- 
tles and the faithful women who followed our 
Lord in the world, who loved to receive Him 
into their humble homes, and to hear his 
words and to minister to his wants. 

But these are not all who, when the Lord 
was a stranger, have taken Him in. 

No ; to the great company of the righteous 
ones who in the day of judgment stand at the 
King's right hand, the Lord says, " I was a 
stranger, and ye took me in." 

And these righteous ones were not alone 
those who had lived on earth in our Saviour's 
times, but were those gathered out of every 



A MEDITATION FOR CHRISTMAS-TIME. 197 

nation and age and country, who, in extending 
this act of mercy to the least of their brethren, 
had done it unto the Lord. 

There is a way, then, of receiving the Lord 
who comes to us as a stranger other than the 
literal housing of Him as a man in the natural 
world. He represents Himself to us, indeed, 
in his Word as ever, even now, standing at the 
door and knocking, waiting for us to take Him 
in. And if any man open the door, He says, 
" I will come in unto Him, and sup with Him, 
and He with me." 

The Lord Jesus is in heaven, whither He 
ascended after his resurrection ; and yet He is 
close to us here on earth. He who made the 
world and is the sole God and Lord of heaven 
and earth is yet to-day in the world, and the 
world knows Him not. " There standeth one 
among us whom we know not," — now as in 
the days of John the Baptist. He it is who 
alone baptizeth our hearts with his Holy Spirit 
of Truth and with the fire of Divine Love. 

17* 



198 THE STRANGER AT THE DOOR; 

And because we know Him not, because we 
think of God as dwelling afar off in heaven 
and not near to us on earth, because we know 
not of his Divine Humanity, which embraces 
all men and is near to all, therefore is this 
present Christ a stranger to us. We look up to 
God Avhen we offer our prayers to " Our Father 
who art in the heavens/' — we do not see 
Him in doing the common deeds of our daily 
life ; and yet if we are leading the life of re- 
generation, the Lord is as near us in our every- 
day working as in our formal prayers at stated 
times. It is right for us to think of our Lord 
as in heaven enthroned in glory and surrounded 
with everything of beauty and majesty which 
our feeble finite minds can conceive of. It is 
not a reproach to the righteous that they ask 
the King in ignorance, " When saw we Thee a 
stranger, and took Thee in ?" The Lord does 
not prize their ministry less because it was 
done unto Him unawares. They worshiped 
and prayed to the Lord in heaven as far above 



A MEDITATION FOR CHRISTMAS- TIME. 1 99 

and beyond die sphere of their earthly business, 
while yet in the fear of God and out of love 
to Him they tried to live faithfully and well 
with their fellow-men. It was for the Lord 
Jesus — the Infinite, the Omnipresent, the All- 
seeing — to behold the inward character of their 
deeds, and to know that they were done verily 
unto Himself when done unto the least of his 
brethren on earth. The Stranger is one whom 
we know not. If we knew Him, He would be 
no stranger. It is so with every one to-day in 
his immediate personal relation with the Lord 
Jesus. He is the stranger at the door. It is 
for us to open unto Him, or to keep the door 
closed. If we take this Stranger in, we shall 
not behold in Him at once the Lord in his 
heavenly glory and Divine majesty. We shall 
not see anything Divine in Him, nor shall we 
see any beauty that we should desire Him. 
He shall have, it may well be, " neither form 
nor comeliness'' in our sight. But we shall see 
something human ; the something that lies at 



200 THE STRANGER AT THE DOOR; 

the roots of our human life ; something on 
which the very heavens rest ; something that 
shall make us sensible one day, if not of the 
Divinity, then of the Divine Humanity, of the 
Infinite One, and which will make plain to us 
what the apostle means when he calls the 
Church the Body of Christ. 

Thus the Lord, the Infinite Divine One, 
comes to us now a stranger, disguised under 
the cloak of our common humanity, that we 
may in freedom, without compulsion, learn to 
love and to serve Him in learning to love and 
serve our fellow-man. He comes in the form 
of the common practical precepts of the Di- 
vine Word, — the laws of charitable and right- 
eous living, — man with his fellow-man, here 
on earth. No duty so commonplace or mean 
in the eyes of men ; no impulse to good ; no 
gentle act or expression of affection or pity or 
compassion ; no word of forgiveness and re- 
conciliation ; no withholding from an evil or 
blasphemous word, or from an uncharitable 



A MEDITATION FOR CHRISTMAS-TIME. 201 

opinion or utterance ; no little wayside word, 
or deed of encouragement, or help, or conso- 
lation ; nay, finally, no trustful and prayerful 
act of resignation, wherein we accept cheerfully 
from God the lowly, toilsome way of patient 
endurance which He has laid before our feet; 
— but, in so doing, the Lord Jesus has come 
to us a stranger, and we have taken Him in. 
So does the Lord desire to be taken into our 
hearts, freely, willingly, w^e opening the door 
not in awe and fear, but gladly and warmly, as 
to receive an humble guest who has no claim 
on us but that of the brotherhood of all in the 
love of God ! 

That there is something peculiarly sacred in 
the rites of hospitality has been acknowledged 
for ages in the usages of almost all the known 
nations of the earth. To have eaten at one's 
table, to have been sheltered under his roof, 
has been regarded as a sort of solemn pledge 
of peace and mutual protection. Whence this 
sacredness of hospitality, or the receiving of 
i* 



202 THE STRANGER AT THE DOOR; 

strangers, had its origin it is not important 
here to in-quire ; but no one can fail to see that 
to a Christian mind there must be a deep re- 
ligious significance attaching to it. Our Lord 
has said that whosoever so befriends or takes 
in the stranger renders this service of mercy 
to Himself. In the literal statement there is 
doubtless meant only this, that in acting char- 
itably and mercifully to all our fellow-men, be- 
cause they are brethren of the Lord, — that is, 
the objects of his love, and of our love, so far 
as we love the Lord, — we are really doing 
God's will ; we are reciprocating God's love 
and kindness to us, we are serving the Lord in 
the way most pleasing to Him. This duty is 
specially required of us toward strangers, be- 
cause it calls into activity an unselfish regard 
for all men as brethren ; it calls for a spirit of 
universal kindness, confidence, and charity 
toward our neighbor. The stranger is not one 
to whom we do good expecting good in return ; 
we do not befriend him because of his dignity, 



A MEDITATION FOR CHRISTMAS-TIME. 203 

or wealth, or power, or anything that can 
reflect a benefit on us. We take him in 
simply as a fellow-man, as one whom God has 
made and whom God loves, and whom God 
would have us love and treat with kindness if 
we love Him truly. Surely, in the befriending 
of strangers there is something sacred, some- 
thing that appeals to the noblest sentiment of 
humanity, something into which heaven and the 
love of God flows down with mighty power. 
But above the natural duties of hospitality 
(which word may always recall to us this its 
sacred association when we remember its de- 
rivation from hospeSy meaning the stranger) 
there is the spiritual act of hospitality, or re- 
ceiving as a stranger one of the least of the 
Lord's brethren. The Lord's brethren are 
in the widest sense our neighbor, and this 
means all to whom we can do good. The 
neighbor, the brethren whom we are to serve 
and love, is therefore the good in our neigh- 
bor, or in any person or thing for which we 



204 THE STRANGER AT THE DOOR; 

can act. When we seek the good of our 
neighbor, personally ; when we seek the good 
of the Church, or of the country, then are we 
truly serving the Lord and loving Him. For 
the Lord is present in his own goodness, and 
there is no one good but God, — that is, all 
goodness is from Him. Spiritual hospitality, 
then, or the spiritually taking in of the stran- 
ger, consists in our befriending and helping, 
and unselfishlv devoting ourselves to that 
which is good ; not simply to that which we 
like or prefer, or consider good in our natu- 
ral hearts, — for these things are no strangers, 
but our old intimates, — but to the good which 
comes from heaven, which is contained in 
every precept of our religion, which may be 
sought out and kindly fostered by us in our 
fellow-man, and which comes to us, a stranger, 
and is the Lord Himself in his Divine Hu- 
manity coming to us in the humble guise of 
our earthly duties toward ourselves and one 
another. It is the Lord's heavenly good that 



A MEDITATION FOR CHRISTMAS-TIME. 205 

lies concealed in every act of true piety, char- 
ity, and resistance of evil. And this heavenly 
o-ood is the brother whom we are to take in 

o 

to our hearts as a stranger. And if we do so, 
we shall learn in the clay of judgment that we 
have been loving and serving the Lord Him- 
self, who is the Only Good, and the source of 
all goodness. 

To take into our houses the brethren, yea, 
to receive the Lord Himself when a stranger, is, 
then, to receive his good into our hearts and 
lives. This his goodness comes, as I have 
said, always as a stranger, for it is that which 
our natural heart at first neither knows nor 
loves. He is no old friend, no powerful bene- 
factor, no acquaintance seemingly profitable to 
cultivate with anything worldly in view. No ! 
the unselfish motive, the desire to do our 
simple duty in the sight of God, the resolution 
to deny self, the exercise of the heavenly virtues 
of patience and forgiveness, the willingness to 
cease from some evil thing in our life, — this 

18 



206 THE STRANGER AT THE DOOR. 

comes not at first with the familiar smile of a 
friend to be greeted and ushered in with joy. 
No ! As a stranger do these heavenly motives 
of goodness come down and stand knocking 
at our hearts' doors. Who will take them in ? 
Ah ! who will open the door to this Divine 
Guest, — the Stranger to the sinful household 
He has come to save, — the Lord of heaven 
present in the garb of earthly humility ? Who 
will open to Him, that He may come in and 
sup with us and we with Him ? 

" O how shall I receive thee, 

How greet thee, Lord, aright ! 
All nations long to see thee, 
My hope, my heart's delight ! 

"O, kindle, Lord, most holy, 
The lamp within my breast, 
To do, in spirit lowly, 

All that may please thee best." 



(The Wnfeuotnt $ouv; 0V t §tow rijjhtttj to Uwpw t0 



Lest coming suddenly He find you sleeping — St. Mark xiii. 36. 



THERE is one central moment of our ex- 
istence to which all our life in this world 
tends, and from which takes its beginning our 
endless life in the world to come. This is the 
hour of death,- — that hour when we shall for 
ever lay aside this mortal body and go forth 
in our substantial spiritual body to inhabit for 
evermore the spiritual world. This change of 
abode from the material to the spiritual world 
is the greatest outward change that can befall 
us, for it involves a change of everything out- 
side of ourselves ; and all that remains un- 
changed, in that event, is that which is within 
ourselves. This is, indeed, not changed by the 

207 



208 THE UNKNOWN HOUR; OR, 

event *of death, really, although even in this, 
the inward self, there will be an apparent 
change ; for in death we shall come more truly 
to know the character and the life that is within 
us than we have known it while living in this 
world. 

But great as is this event of death, and won- 
derful as is the change of abode and all exter- 
nal circumstance wrought by it, there is another 
fact connected with it which is of far more im- 
mediate and urgent importance. For although 
the event of death does not itself produce a 
change in us, yet it does so change our out- 
ward condition that what we are at the hour 
of dying, that we must ever remain as to the 
essential and distinguishing character of our 
life. Here on earth it is otherwise. Here, 
from being evil, our lives may be made good ; 
but not so when we come into the other world. 
For through all the changes we undergo in 
this life, our character is forming itself into 
either a heavenly or an infernal image; we are, 



HOW RIGHTLY TO PREPARE TO DIE. 2(X) 

in the unseen depths of the inner life, either 
growing to be an angel or a devil ; and, after 
we die, the character thus formed is not again 
changed. 

This event, which calls us out of this world 
into the spiritual world, is, therefore, followed 
very shortly by another event, which is the de- 
termination of what character we are, whether 
good or evil, heavenly or infernal, and the al- 
lotment to us of an eternal abode in heaven or 
in hell. This event is called the Judgment, and 
it is for ev£ry soul that passes into the other 
world that last judgment of which we are 
warned in the Holy Word. 

The judgment, as we read about it in the 
gospels, is always accompanied by the Coming 
of the Lord as the Son of Man, or as the 
Word of God. The Lord is described as com- 
ing in the glory of the Father, with all the 
holy angels ; as coming in the clouds of 
heaven with power and great glory ; and also, 
in another place, as coming forth from the 

18* 



2 1 THE UNKNO WN HO UR ; OR, 

opened heavens, riding upon a White Horse, in 
righteousness to judge and make war. These 
expressions are all symbolic, like those other 
parables of the kingdom of heaven which 
our Lord spake, and they describe both the 
general judgment which is executed in the 
spiritual world when a Church or Divine disr 
pensation is at an end, and the Lord comes, 
in his Divine Truth, to restore it anew ; and, 
also, the particular judgment which the soul 
of every one undergoes when his natural life 
is ended and he enters the spiritual world and 
into the more immediate presence of God. 

But when the soul is judged after death, it 
does not suffer any sudden and startling 
change ; it is not called at once into a state 
entirely new and strange either of unhappiness 
or of bliss ; neither does the Divine Judge re- 
gard the soul with anger, nor determine its 
future lot in any other wise than the soul has 
already determined it for itself. But this de- 
cision shall now be made known ; this real 



HOW RIGHTLY TO PREPARE TO DIE. 211 

character of the soul shall now be revealed; 
that which was here concealed and misrepre- 
sented is there brought into the light. For 
there is nothing covered in our present life 
which shall not be then revealed, nor anything 
hid that shall not then be known ; and that 
which here has been spoken in darkness shall 
be heard in the light ; and that which w 7 e have 
uttered in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed 
upon the house-tops. 

The judgment, therefore, consists essentially 
in a true revelation of the inner and actual 
character of man ; and as this can be discerned 
only by the eye of the All-seeing, therefore it 
is said that God is the judge ; and as it is dis- 
cerned only in the light of the Divine Truth 
itself, — for in this light alone can all that is 
good and true be distinguished from what is 
evil and false, — therefore it is said by our 
Lord, "The Words that I have spoken unto 
you, the same shall judge you in the last day." 
Therefore, again, when the Lord is represented 



212 THE UNKNOWN HOUR; OR, 

in the Revelation as coming" in righteousness 
to judge and make war, his name is there 
called the Word of God. Thus we shall be 
truly judged according to our deeds, and in 
the presence and sight of God ; and that which 
shall judge us and determine truly and finally 
our real character and our fitness for associa- 
tion with angels in heaven or with the evil 
spirits in hell is the Divine Truth itself, called 
in the Bible the Word, and also the Son of 
Man. 

" Lest coming suddenly He find you sleep- 
ing." We understand now what is here meant 
by the Lord's coming-, — that it refers to our 
own coming into his presence when death shall 
admit us into the spiritual world, and when our 
characters shall be plainly disclosed in the 
light of the Divine Truth. The Lord is always 
present with every one of us, and He sees 
and knows constantly what goes on within us 
as well as without us. But to us, because un- 
seen, He seems far away ; and because of the 



HOW RIGHTLY TO PREPARE TO DIE. 213 

darkness of our minds and the deceitful ap- 
pearances which surround us in this world, we 
cannot truly know ourselves ; nor so long as 
we remain in this world is our character en- 
tirely fixed. When death calls us into the 
spiritual world, then we come into the light of 
God's holy presence ; outward appearances 
and delusions and all hypocrisies are cast off. 
We know ourselves then as we have not 
known or felt before, to be in the presence of 
the all-seeing God and Judge. Therefore this 
solemn moment is described in the Bible as 
the coming of the Lord. 

And now, two important points of the Di- 
vine instruction concerning this event are to 
be noted. One is, that the Lord shall come 
suddenly, — that is, unawares; and, secondly, 
the solemn warning that, when He comes, we 
be not found sleeping. In other words, the 
practical truth urged upon us here is, that, 
although we are ignorant of the hour of our 
death, yet we should always be prepared for it. 



2 1 4 THE UNKNO WN HO UR ; O R t 

The event of death and the coming of the 
Lord here referred to are identical, when the 
meaning of these words is applied to us indi- 
vidually, and not collectively. And the sudden 
coming of the Lord refers to our ignorance of 
the hour when we shall be called away: " For 
the Son of Man cometh at the hour when ye 
think not" ; and the word suddenly here means 
also unawares. It refers to our ignorance, not 
only of the time of our death, but of the real 
condition of our souls ; for by hour is spirit- 
ually meant the state or condition in which we 
are. 

The Lord commands us, therefore, to be 
always watching for Him, and yet suffers us not 
to know when He shall come. He requires 
of us always to be prepared to be called at 
death into his presence to the judgment, and 
yet has made it impossible for us to know 
whether we have a longer or a shorter time to 
live ; whether we shall be called to our ac- 
count in a few hours, on the morrow, or after 



] fO\V RIGHTLY TO PREPARE TO DIE. 215 

many years. Likewise, we know not the exact 
state of our own souls, so great and so inces- 
sant is the conflict in us between opposing 
motives and principles ; we know not, indeed, 
whether ours be the spiritual state called the 
evening or the morning or the early dawn. 
All we know is that our Lord is our master, 
who has intrusted in this earthly life to every 
man his work, and seemingly gone away ; and 
that at an hour we know not He will return ; 
and that He has commanded the porter to 
watch for his coming, lest, coming suddenly, 
He find us sleeping. 

It is plain that if we knew, each one of us, 
the hour in which w^ould end our earthly life, 
we would not be constantly on the watch, but 
would, very likely, consider our allotted period 
of earthly life as our own to use in the way 
that should please us best, while we would de- 
fer all preparation for the life to come until the 
last hour, vainly imagining that it would not 
then be too late. It would be in every way a 



2l6 THE UNKNOWN HOUR; OR, 

disadvantage were we to know beforehand 
when we are to die. The sure knowledge of 
our early death would deprive our life here of 
all enterprise and healthy interest in the world 
around us ; while the same knowledge of a long 
life would, as I have said, take away many a 
preventive to sinful indulgence which the fear 
of death now affords, and imperil our future 
welfare by allowing us to foster too exclusively 
our w T orldly and carnal affections. Moreover, if 
we knew that hour, we should all be governed 
more or less by fear and by hope of reward 
merely, and thus a constraint would be put 
upon our freedom, and this life on earth would 
not answer its appointed end, — namely, of de- 
veloping our characters while we are in free- 
dom to choose between good and evil. 

But, although the hour of our death is thus 
hidden from us, we are none the less warned 
of its sure approach, and commanded to watch, 
lest, coming suddenly, the Master find us sleep- 
ing. The difference between the watchful state 

o 



HOW RIGHTLY TO PREPARE TO DIE. 217 

and the sleeping state is the difference between 
the natural and the spiritual life. To be watch- 
ful does not mean merely to be thinking of 
death, and whether it will come to-day or to- 
morrow. Nothing is more hurtful to our 
mental health than a morbid dwelling on the 
thought of death ; and that we might not make 
this a fixed, definite object of our contempla- 
tion would seem to be one cause why, in the 
Divine Providence, it is so carefully concealed 
from our knowledge until it is close at hand. 
The Lord wishes that w r e shall think of Him, 
labor for Him, and struggle manfully against 
our evils just when we are in our fullest vigor 
and best health. " Remember thy Creator in 
the days of thy youth" is the wise precept of 
the ancient sage. It is then we are in our 
fullest freedom, and no craven fear drives us 
reluctant to repentance, but we walk joyfully 
and bravely in the path of the Lord's com- 
mandments, not only seeking the kingdom of 
heaven of our own choice, but seeking it here 
k 19 



2l8 THE UNKNOWN HOUR; OR, 

on earth as far as a holy and useful life will 
enable us to know its blessedness. But if to 
be watchful is not to be always thinking of 
death, what is it? The Lord says that the 
master gave to every man his work, and com- 
manded the porter to watch. Now, the porter 
is not to watch idly for the return of the master 
only, but to watch well the household left in his 
charge and all the precious goods. So we are 
to watch over those things committed to us, 
and see that we keep our soul's household 
holy and clean and fit to be presented before 
the Lord when He shall come. The servants 
of the household are the knowledges of good- 
ness and truth which the Lord gives to all who 
learn of Him in his Word, and the watchful 
porter and guard is our capacity to perceive 
these holy and true things and to preserve 
them from injury. But the evil things which 
tempt us from within, and which surround us 
in this outer world, these are what will surely 
destroy all those sacred treasures committed 



HOW RIGHTLY TO PREPARE TO J) IE. 219 

to our care if we are not ever on the alert; 
the lusts of worldly and selfish affection, and 
all the fallacies and falsities of a carnal reason, 
— these, like the moth and rust, will corrupt 
the goodness and truth which the Lord has 
committed to our care, and, like the thief, will 
surely break through and steal. It is against 
these that we are to watch, and watch without 
ceasing. We are to be ever on our guard 
against every affection, thought, motive, or de- 
sire which will do violence to one of the holy 
and heavenly knowledges of truth which the 
Lord has put into our minds. We are thus 
ever to be awake ; to keep our minds open to 
heavenly light ; to never suffer our spirits to 
become heavy and sluggish, through the weak- 
ness of the flesh, and our discernment to be 
dull and slow to distinguish the right from the 
wrong, the pure from the impure, the just from 
the unjust, the holy from the profane. 

The life merely natural, or merely of the 
bodily senses and their evidences, is a sleep ; 



220 THE UNKNOWN HOUR; OR, 

for in it we neither know anything of our spir- 
itual nature nor of the spiritual world in which 
wq live ; we know nothing of the life to come ; 
we know no life other than that of the body. 
And, further, we are, in the merely natural 
life, wholly idle and dormant as to our spirits ; 
we are cultivating no spiritual knowledges or 
motives ; we are forming no heavenly affec- 
tions ; we are not even so far awake as to see 
our own gross evils and errors, and we are 
too sluggish and burdened with mere earthly 
and corporeal concerns to lift a hand against 
them should we ever by some stray gleam of 
light recognize these foul invaders in their true 
characters. Such is the condition of those 
who are found sleeping when the Lord comes. 
The hereditary evils of their nature have 
taken strong hold on them as on all ; and 
they, indifferent to all the warnings of God's 
Word, have given themselves up to the 
slumber of sensual ease and of uncontrolled 
self-love, until their minds have become wholly 



HOW RIGHTLY TO PREPARE TO DIE. 221 

despoiled of the holy truths of faith, and 
germs of heavenly affections once planted 
there, and in darkness and desolation these 
await the Master's coming. 

Let us be ever on the watch ; not against 
death, for that shall truly come as a good 
angel sent direct from the merciful Lord to 
lead us to our eternal home, but against all 
those evil invaders who in many wiles and 
snares are constantly surrounding our habita- 
tion and laying wait for our souls. Aware of 
the frailty of our hearts, of our constant need of 
the Divine aid and guidance, let not our souls 
give over their watch for a moment, but be 
ever awake, walking in the light, and praying 
that we enter not into temptation. So the 
Lord, though He come suddenly, shall yet not 
find us sleeping, and we, having done each one 
his work, shall be ready to enter into our rest 
and our reward. 

The practical result of our meditation on 
the subject before us is, that we are left in 

19* 



222 THE UNKNOWN HOUR; OR, 

ignorance of the hour of our death in order 
that we may the better p7'epare for it and for 
the judgment that accompanies it. Our prep- 
aration consists not in dwelling anxiously on 
the event itself, since that is in every sense a 
blessing, and we know that it will come just at 
that time when it is best for us to die ; but our 
true preparation is in being ever awake and 
on the watch against the deadening influence 
of carnal and earthly things upon our souls, 
since there is no more cunning and no dearer 
pursuit for evil spirits than to be lulling our 
souls into that indifference and forgetful- 
ness regarding the holy things of faith and 
religion, that will at length strip us of all our 
defenders and leave us forever the slaves of 
their sinful enticements. And the way to 
wake and watch is, to keep ever in mind the 
truths of the Divine Word, and to order our 
daily lives in accordance therewith. This it 
is to have our loins girded and our lights 
burning, and to be like servants who wait for 



HO IV RIGHTLY TO PREPARE TO DIE. 223 

their true and everlasting Lord. Blessed are 
those servants whom the Lord, when He cometJi, 
shall find watching ; and if He shall come in 
the second watch or come in the third watch 
and find them so, blessed are those servants ! 



THE END. 



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